The 110-year-old lemon has garnered significant attention from the MI5 exhibition organised in London. The lemon, which is now black and shrivelled, is known for its role in helping convict Karl Muller, a German spy.
A 110-year-old desiccated lemon, which played a crucial role in espionage history, has garnered attention from a London exhibition drawn from the files of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency. Other notable attractions at Britain’s National Archives include compact spy cameras, a briefcase abandoned by fleeing Soviet spy Guy Burgess, and microdots in a talcum powder tin. Britain’s National Archives charts the history of a secretive agency that is – slowly – becoming more open.
Here’s what MI5 Director said
About the organisation’s work, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum underscored that its work “is often different from fiction, whether that fiction is George Smiley or Jackson Lamb” – the brilliant spymaster of John le Carré’s novels and the slovenly supervisor of MI5 rejects in Mick Herron’s “Slow Horses” series.
How did a lemon help Britain’s MI5?
The lemon, which is now black and shrivelled, played an important role in helping convict Karl Muller, a German spy in Britain during World War I. The police had found it in his bedside table, along with another in his overcoat pocket.
During his secret trial, evidence showed that their (lemons) juices had been used to write invisible-ink letters detailing British troop movements. Consequently, Muller was executed by firing squad at the Tower of London in 1915.
Other items on display at the exhibition
The exhibition also included declassified records held by the National Archives as well as items loaned from the secret museum inside Thames House, which is MI5’s London headquarters.
In the exhibition, there are records of the UK’s World War II successes, when the agency used the captured Nazi agents to send disinformation back to Germany, which deceived Adolf Hitler about the location of the looming Allied invasion in 1944.
Exhibtion showcases Britain’s failures
Failures include the years-long betrayal of the upper-crust “Cambridge Spies”, whose members spilt secrets to the Soviet Union from the heart of the UK intelligence establishment.
The exhibition also showcases a 1945 report by spymaster Maxwell Knight in which he discusses whether women could make good agents. The exhibition also acknowledges that MI5 was slow in recognising the threat from fascism in the 1930s, and later it ended up spending too much time spying on the small Communist Party of Great Britain.
(With inputs from AP)
