WITH No Time To Die about to hit cinemas at the end of this month (more than a year-and-half-late), the latest James Bond instalment is being hailed as the most anticipated movie of all time.

But back in May of 1963, Southend became the centre of a real life drama that could easily have come straight out of a OO7 script when a nuclear physicist was stopped at the airport and accused of being a spy.

Suave Italian scientist Giuseppe Martelli, aged 39, was detained as he entered Southend Airport from Ostend. On him police found a packet of cigarettes inside which secret codes and numbers were hidden.

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The father-of-three had been on Special Branch’s radar for some time as a suspected spy-in-waiting for the Russians. He was charged under the official secrets act and taken to Southend Magistrates’ Court for a short hearing.

Born in Pistoia in 1923, Martelli had graduated from a university in Naples in 1939 but his academic career was interrupted by the war, which saw him fight for the Italian resistance. After the war he continued his education, studying and lecturing in Rome and Pisa.

By 1963, Martelli worked for the European Atomic Energy Association in Brussels and had been working at the Culham Atomic Research Establishment near Oxford. He was also a professor at Birmingham University. So when this unassuming, handsome Italian professor was charged with spying for the Russians, it made headlines across the world.

At a further court hearing at Rochford Magistrates’ Court, Martelli was charged with working for the Russian Intelligence Service between 1960 and April 1963.

The court heard how after questioning Martelli at Southend Airport, Detective Chief Inspector David Stratton of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, removed some cigarettes from him.

Inside the packet of cigarettes was a cavity and in the cavity were what were described as “one time pads” which contained a series of numbers used to encipher a message.

“The inspector showed the defendant’s diary which contained a series of letters and figures which in the submission of the Crown was a means of enciphering a message,” the court was told.

Also submitted as evidence was a sketch in a diary which correctly illustrated a park in Wimbledon, which the inspector described as being a well known meeting place of the Russian Secret Service.

Other evidence presented was a pair of shoes which had cavities in the heels which would provide a hiding place for documents.

By July the trial was moved to the Old Bailey in London, attracting world-wide attention. Martelli’s defence counsel Jeremy Hutchinson QC described the trial as one of the most remarkable alleged spy cases to ever take place in this country.

The sensational court case saw Martelli deny all nine charges against him but he admitted the Russians had tried to recruit him by blackmailing him in order to get him to work for them. He basically had been stringing them along but never passed on information.

He said he had been approached several times by Soviet spies who inferred the life of his estranged wife and children in Italy and well as his new wife and child in the UK, could be in danger. Martelli was also told those who didn’t co-operate were ‘”liquidated” and that the Russians had an inside man at Scotland Yard.

But after hearing all the complex evidence, the jury took ten hours to acquit Martelli of all charges. As the verdict was read out the relieved Italian shook hands with his jailers.

“The last ten hours have been a torment which only man on trial who is innocent can understand,” he said. “I thought it would never end.

Martelli and wife Pamela remained together until her death in 1991. Martelli went on to teach at Sussex University. He died in 1994, without a blemish on his reputation. In his obituary his peers revered his scientific work and praised his ‘zest for life’.