A FORMER Padgate Community High School teacher has given readers an insight into her life as a South African spy in a book published this week.

Agent 407, Olivia Forsyth, became the best known female spy of the apartheid era after being imprisoned by the ANC in Angola and escaping to the British Embassy.

The mum-of-two made headlines around the world as Margaret Thatcher's government intervened to eventually get her out of Angola where Olivia had been held in a tiny cell in the notorious Quatro prison camp after her defection and offer to act as a double agent for the ANC.

After returning to Britain in 2001, Olivia trained as a teacher working in Padgate and St Chads in Runcorn before spending 11 years teaching English at The Grange School in Hartford with the name Olivia Myburgh.

She kept her identity a secret throughout her teaching career but days before her retirement, Olivia surprised the school assembly by revealing her incredible life story.

Olivia said: "What happened in my 20s almost seems as though it happened to someone else.

"When I came to the UK I found friendship and security.

"The pupils I taught were lovely but I kept my past life to myself, apart from a few close friends."

Agent 407, which is also available as an ebook, describes the recruitment of Olivia by the notorious Craig Williamson and her infiltration of ANC supporters, her leadership of left wing student organisations while spying on them, her decision to defect to the ANC, two years of imprisonment, escape and the operation mounted by the South African police security to claim her as a heroine of their own.

Commenting on the now famous assembly where she revealed her past to staff and pupils, Olivia said: "I think they were a bit shocked.

"When I hit the headlines after my release in 1988 there were so many half truths and lies printed that I always planned to write the book to set the record straight.

"Now seems a good time for it to be published."

Olivia moved back to the UK in 2001 with her two daughters and briefly worked as a journalist in North Wales before training as a teacher.

She moved from South Africa to live in Henllan, Denbigh, near her late father, marrying Eric Langton, former editor in chief of Trinity Mirror Cheshire in 2009.

They lived in Helsby, and briefly Waverton, until moving to live in Italy in April this year.