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William Murphy tells us, Thursday, October 30, 2003, how Arthur Koestler really killed himself

 

typewriter

 

Koestler: a correction

NOT that it matters (I mean, it really doesn't!), but Arthur Koestler actually took a drug overdose; he didn't hang himself (current Radical's Diary). A close friend of my ex-wife was the sister of Ursula Kuczynski ("Sonia" to KGB buffs) and was frequently at the wrong end of Koestler's ravings at Hampstead dinner parties.

She utterly detested him, and was indelicate enough to express something considerably short of grief at his passing.

It was also very much the small talk of Hampstead (is there any other kind?) that his wife, Cynthia Koestler, was an unwilling partner in their suicide pact. There were even suggestions that he ... ooops, better not go there.

Postscript: The sister of Ursula Kuczynski (aka Ruth Werner, code-name Sonia), Barbara, married a now-deceased curator at the Museum of Mankind; their home still glories in a large framed photograph of the two Kuczynski sisters bouncing on Karl Liebknecht's knee. If Barbara was not also a Soviet asset, I would be beyond amazed.

When "Sonia" was exposed, Barbara's son was teased in the playground for having an aunt who worked for the KGB, to which he sniffily replied that she worked for Soviet Military Intelligence.

Meanwhile, their next-door neighbour, a secretary (or something) with MI5, screeched "why didn't you tell me?" over the garden fence, to which the understandable reply was "why didn't you know?" The son now runs a travel agency specialising in tours to North Korea.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

William Murphy

 

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