Witness Geoffrey Chew and the benevolent police informer
In the days of the Cold War people who came into regular contact with foreigners were kept under close police scrutiny and were put under intense pressure to report on details of their meetings. In the early 1960s the South African musicologist Geoffrey Chew spent a year studying in the city of Brno. His landlady was a highly cultivated woman, who spoke several languages. She was also a reluctant police informer, but she got round this rather distasteful problem in a neat and elegant way. On a recent trip back to Brno, Geoffrey Chew remembered the time.
Geoffrey Chew
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