I did what I did not to make money but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service.

"


Biography
Norwood was born to a Latvian father Alexander Sirnis and a British mother Gertrude née Stedman in Pokesdown Hampshire (now Dorset). Both her parents were active in socialist circles. In 1935 Melita Norwood married Hilary Norwood (1910–1986) the schoolteacher son of Russian parents (his name had originally been Nussbaum) and a lifelong communist.

She was considered "the most important female agent ever recruited by the USSR. Melita Stedman Norwood (née Sirnis) (25 March 1912 – 2 June 2005) was a British civil servant KGB intelligence source who for a period of about 40 years following her recruitment in 1937 supplied the KGB (and its predecessor agencies) with state secrets from her job at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association. Her KGB handlers gave her the codename "Hola".