unconcerned by her periodic, and apparently casual, meetings with Fuchs in Nethercote, Banbury or on country cycle rides. At that time the British intelligence services seem to have been disinclined to follow up their concerns. Two years later detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb refocused priorities within MI5, however. Fuchs was arrested towards the end of 1949; in January 1950 he was put on trial and confessed that he was a spy. The day before his trial started, fearing that she was about to be unmasked, Agent Sonya left England. In March 1950, after two decades away from the city of her birth, she turned up back in Berlin. Meanwhile, Fuchs finally identified her as his Soviet contact in November 1950. The espionage-related aspects of her friendship with Melita Norwood only began to emerge several decades later. Back in the GDR Germany had changed. Ursula Beurton returned to East Berlin, in what had been the Soviet occupation zone and was now becoming the German Democratic Republic, in October 1949. A systematic nation building process had been underway for several years before 1949, starting with the arrival from Moscow of 30 well prepared formerly exiled German communists in Berlin at the start of May 1945, led by Walter Ulbricht. The Communist Party of Germany had been merged in April 1946 with the East German elements of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED / Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands). On her arrival in East Berlin, Beurton joined the SED. She also resigned from the GRU. After undertaking journalism and other writing work, she became an author. In 1950, she was appointed head of the Capitalist Countries Division in the Central Department of Foreign Information in the Government Information Office. She was later fired, reportedly because she forgot to lock a safe door. Between 1953 and 1956 she worked in the Chamber of Commerce for foreign trade. Some published works as Ursula Beurton: Immer unterwegs. Reportage aus Prag über die Tätigkeit unserer Ingenieure im Ausland. Verlag Die Wirtschaft: Berlin 1956 as Ruth Werner: Ein ungewöhnliches Mädchen. Verlag Neues Leben: Berlin 1958 Olga Benario. Die Geschichte eines tapferen Lebens. Verlag Neues Leben: Berlin 1961 Über hundert Berge. Verlag Neues Leben: Berlin 1965 Ein Sommertag. Verlag Neues Leben: Berlin 1966 In der Klinik. Verlag Neues Leben: Berlin 1968 Muhme Mehle. Neuauflage: Spotless: Berlin 2000 Kleine Fische – Große