SECRETS of the Cold War were revealed in Bolton as it emerged that there are as many Russian agents operating in the UK today as there was during the 1980s.

Professor Lord Peter Hennessy gave a speech entitled "Cold War Whitehall — Writing About the Secret State” at this month’s meeting of the Bolton Branch of the Historical Assocation.

Professor Hennessy, who is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University and a crossbench member of the House of Lords, paid tribute to William Waldegrave as a historian and scholar and commended him and John Major for ensuring the release into the public domain of Cold War files.

He told how more than 200,000 files had so far been made public. He said their continuing release would allow historians to "demystify the past" and to play “catch up history”.

He referred to his own generation as the “children of the Uranium age” and evoked memories of a time when people lived under the very real threat of nuclear destruction.

Professor Hennessy spoke about how several of the most sensitive of Whitehall's secrets could not be declassified until the Cold War was over.

These included documents about the transition drill to a third world war, nuclear release procedures the Polaris submarines — and how the state apparatus would have been devolved into bunkers just before a nuclear attack.

He told the audience: "There are as many Russian agents operating in London today as there were during the 1980s."

He added that oil and gas revenues were helping Putin rebuild Russian strength.

The question was raised as to whether the recent invasion of Crimea was a one-off event or the beginning of something new and he pointed out that a lot of retired intelligence experts on Russia had been re-employed in the past few years.

The professor stressed the importance of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance between the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK — a group which still meets weekly.

He said that the numbers involved in intelligence and counter-intelligence have doubled since the Twin Towers attacks on New York on September 11, 2001.

The evening was brought to a close by Chairman Michael Shipley.