Archivists have been digitally scanning 4.5million handwritten pages from the files of the Státní Bezpecnost (StB).

Last year, they released files on the activities of secret agents and counter-intelligence officers. Among them is a dossier on Jan Sarkocy, a spy dispatched to Britain in 1986 to recruit possible ‘assets’, including Left-leaning Parliamentarians, to the Soviet cause.

In black and white, it gives the lie to Labour’s attempt to dismiss him as a Walter Mitty fantasist.