John Varicopulos was born in Blackpool, Lancashire on 7 January 1908. In 1937 he assumed the name John Murray. Murray worked as a short-hand typist until about 1935 when he moved to Riga in Latvia to become a tobacco merchant. He married Nora (ne Korzhenko), a Russian spy, in 1942 in Archangel, Russia. They fled to England where John enlisted in the British army in 1943. After being demobilised from the Intelligence Corps in 1946, Murray took a number of different jobs. He worked in an ice-cream factory, at H.M. Prison Holloway, and at the Zoological Society of London. He undertook a course in history at the University of Nottingham in 1972-1973, and subsequently dedicated his first book to the staff and students of that year. The book, 'A Spy Called Swallow' (London: W.H. Allen, 1978) tells the story of how he met his wife.
From the guide to the Papers of John Murray (born 1908), clerk and civil servant, 1925-1989, 1925-1989, (The University of Nottingham)
