TO holidaymakers and visitors the picturesque Fife fishing village was an oasis of tranquillity during troubled times. But away from the fishing boats in the harbour and the crow-stepped houses, Crail held a dark cold war secret — it was the site of one of Britain’s most important spy schools.

As fear of a nuclear war and an invasion by the Soviet army mounted, a disused airfield in the village was transformed into a secret Russian language centre to train interrogators, interpreters and eavesdroppers.

About 5,000 trainee cold war spies including Alan Bennett, Dennis Potter and Michael Frayn, the literary giants, were sent to the remote hamlet in the 1950s. The conscripts became weapons in a vast spying machine tasked with tracking the communications of Russian pilots, army units and naval fleets, as Russia blockaded Berlin and invaded Hungary.

On the orders of the prime minister, secret locations for a Joint Services School for Linguists were selected from around Britain to train young servicemen in Russian and provide the early warning system that Britain lacked.

Crail was free of the paranoia about a Russian invasion that was prevalent in much of Britain at the time. The isolated location of the fishing village also meant the men could learn the enemy’s language without distractions.

Harold Shukman, a former Russian history lecturer at Oxford University and student at the secret school, said: “This language school and two others in Surrey and Cornwall contributed a huge amount to the intelligence defence strategy of the time. Around 5,000 people were recruited over nine years to be trained in Russian, some as interpreters and 3,500 as radio signal monitors.

“The aim was to listen in from West Germany and the Baltics to tank and pilot communications during the cold war. Although I studied Russian, I was sent on a course in Crail, where I was trained to interrogate Soviet prisoners of war and understand the technical language of aerodynamics.”

Together with Geoffrey Elliott, an author and fellow student at the school, Shukman has written a book on the experiences of the trainee spies, Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War, which was published in October. Their research will also form part of a BBC documentary, Storyville — My Life as a Spy, which will be shown later this month. The programme is directed by Leslie Woodhead, who was recruited to the school when he was 19.

Elliott, who delivered the message to President Kennedy’s staff that Russian ships were retreating during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, said: “It offered us a fascinating chance to meet foreigners. It was an immersion into all things Russian — not just the language but the culture and why they thought as they did. There wasn’t any real political teaching. There wasn’t time. We were too busy.”

The schools operated from 1951 until 1960, when national service was coming to an end and the government had filled its quota of Russian language speakers. Crail’s unit opened in 1956 and became the only centre for the whole of the UK.

Two years later the government built on the expertise at Crail and turned the surrounding area into a key early warning system. Command rooms to be used in the event of nuclear war were buried 130ft under the country lanes and linked by a labyrinth of tunnels. The main bunker, with concrete walls 10ft thick, was decommissioned 10 years ago and is now a museum.

Had war broken out between East and West, the Scottish spy school could have been as important as Bletchley Park, the secret centre established to crack the German armed forces’ codes during the second world war. Scientists who are thought to have worked at Bletchley Park include Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, and John Logie Baird, Scotland’s inventor of television.

Graduates of the Scottish spy school fill all the ranks of public life. Bennett and Frayn, the award-winning writers, have based successful plays and novels around the world of spying. Other alumni include D M Thomas, the writer, and Martin Gilbert, the historian.

Meanwhile, a Highland village will briefly become a centre of international diplomacy next month when it hosts peace talks between two former Soviet republics. Politicians from Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet in Craigellachie, Morayshire, to settle a long-standing dispute over the Nagorno- Karabakh region. Both sides hope that the tranquil setting will help to calm tempers and assist in solving the conflict which dates back to 1989.

The talks will follow a conference in Edinburgh which parliamentary delegates from Georgia will also attend. George Reid, presiding officer of the Scottish parliament and Westminster representatives will also join the foreign politicians.

A special delegation of Armenian and Azeri politicians will then withdraw to the village where the two rivers most closely associated with the Scotch whisky industry, the Spey and the Fiddich, meet.

Angus Robertson, the Moray MP who visited the south Caucasus last year, was instrumental in bringing the peace talks to Speyside after visiting the region in September. He believes that Scotland is a natural setting for the important meeting. “Sometimes smaller countries can offer something that bigger countries can’t so we’re really pleased to host this,” he said.

“The people of the south Caucasus have a strong connection with the people in Scotland. The development of devolution has been closely followed and used as a model for peaceful transfer of power.”

Arvil Majidov, head of politics at the Azeri embassy, said: “It is quite difficult for such a meeting to take place in the region. Hopefully there will be a more amenable atmosphere when they meet in Scotland. It is such a beautiful country and that has got to be a factor.”

Dr Roland Dannreuther, a specialist in the region at Edinburgh University, said: “When these types of meetings take place in these countries it can be very difficult to find compromises. It is important to get them into a neutral environment where they can talk more freely.”

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