staff Syllabus and training tools One major teaching tool was the Anna H Semeonoff Grammar textbook, informally known as Semyonova. Other teaching materials included comprehensive vocabulary lists, a reading primer called Ordinary People, and a textbook by Pears and Wissotsky's titled Passages for Translation. Literature published in Russian, such as Crime And Punishment, was also used. Assessment systems The attraction of avoiding normal military training and threat of being "returned to unit" if the weekly test was failed tended to make for attentive students. Students who successfully completed the JSSL course had the option of taking the GCE examination in Russian at 'A' level. Many did so. Alumni and legacy Aside from their military contribution, many of the estimated 6,000 trainees continued to use their skills in their subsequent civilian life in translation, business, education and cultural life. Notable alumni of the school include former Governor of the Bank of England Eddie George, playwright and novelist Michael Frayn, actor and writer Alan Bennett, dramatist Dennis Potter, and former director of the Royal National Theatre Sir Peter Hall. The Soviet spy Geoffrey Prime was also a graduate of JSSL at Crail. The industrialist John Harvey-Jones graduated from an early version of the JSSL course in 1945, during the period it was run from Cambridge. Another alumnus, D. M. Thomas, has argued that as well as the school's stated aim of producing linguists for a military purpose, it also 'created a generation of young and influential Britons who had generous, respectful and affectionate feelings for Russia — the eternal Russia of Tolstoy, Pushkin and Pasternak'. Several alumni went on to successful careers in academia. These include John Fennell (Professor of Russian, University of Oxford), Tony Stokes (Professor of Russian, University of Cambridge), Gerry Smith (Professor of Russian, University of Oxford). Ronald Hingley, who ran the London branch of the JSSL, went on to a successful career at the University of Oxford and became an authority on Anton Chekhov. Paul Foote became a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, and an authority on eighteenth century Russia. Extent of interest in the JSSL by the Warsaw Pact For various reasons, the JSSL attracted significant interest from Soviet intelligence. There is, however, no evidence that the School as an organisation or any of its students was ever successfully penetrated by Soviet intelligence. Even so, in the late 1950s, the SIS was so sensitive about security at