Selby's life in the Moscow cage amid Cold War tensions

However he was not a spy - although while job hunting he had been interviewed by MI6 - but a diplomat, working in the British embassies at Moscow and Sofia in Bulgaria in days in which tensions were running high.

And whatever his posting around the world Selby would find time to head for some remote and far flung spot to indulge in his passion since childhood - fishing.

Later he was to have a complete change in career direction, as he went into teaching, and for years was a master at Shrewsbury School.

"It was a standard red herring if a class got bored with what I was trying to explain. They would say: 'Were you a spy in Russia?' I wasn't, but the answer inevitably filled in time when I might otherwise be explaining the perfect tense of French verbs," said Selby, 85, who has now written his memoirs as a diplomat and teacher in a book called "From Communism To Community."

Apart from his 16 years in the diplomatic service, and 24 years teaching modern languages at Shrewsbury, multi-lingual Selby, who lives in the county town, has been a prolific civic and environmental campaigner, and was a key player in the fight to save the site of the Battle of Shrewsbury being wiped out by a vast Toyota car plant.

The book happened by chance. Selby and wife Rachel had arranged to go to a meeting of the Shropshire branch of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies and were about to leave the house when the programme secretary rang up to say the speaker had been delayed, and asked Selby to fill in for a few minutes. So he did, about his time in Moscow, and as the speaker was much later than expected, after about 40 minutes he ran out of anything to say.

"The reaction was very favourable and they said how much they enjoyed it. Someone came up and said that I should write a book about it all. It so happened that I have still got all the letters which I wrote home to my parents when I was abroad on different postings telling them what I was doing. My mother had systematically kept all these letters, numbered them and stored them away.

"I had those here in Shrewsbury in the attic. Here was the material for the first 16 years of my career."

His favourite posting?

"La Paz, Bolivia. It was a small embassy, very good friends, wonderful scenery, and very good fishing. What more could one want? What more could I want?"

Brought up in Broadstairs, Kent, after university he went into the Foreign Office and was soon posted to Moscow as Private Secretary to the Ambassador where being followed by KGB "goons" was a fact of life and hidden microphones were a worry.

"Discussions in the embassy on any confidential matters would take place in a specially designed room within a room. This was made of copper standing on vibration-proof stilts to prevent both audio and electronic penetration from outside, with a recording of a babble of voices as from a cocktail party to conceal whatever was being said within.

"It was even feared that the KGB would find a way of 'reading' letters being typed on a typewriter through the sound emitted by the keys, and so confidential letters were also typed out in the copper box."

Another danger was various set-ups and honey traps to compromise embassy staff and then blackmail them for secrets.

In one letter home Selby described the temporary cook who arrived to replace one going on leave: "She is 19, dark blonde, attractive and has the aptitude of showing off to the utmost the characteristics which the Creator has bestowed, and in this case generously, on the female sex. Clearly a plant by the KGB."

Although he describes embassy life as like being in a cage, there were also opportunities to travel and enjoy his love of the outdoors.

One of his responsibilities was arranging receptions and meals at the embassy, and he was put to the test with a high profile visit by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd to Moscow in February 1959 which aimed to forge a better relationship between the UK and the Soviet Union.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev struck Selby as a small man of ugly porcine appearance.

Another notable visit in which he was involved was that of Field Marshal Montgomery in May 1959. As he arrived at Moscow airport amid pandemonium, with vast numbers of press and photographers, an agitated customs official asked Selby to get Monty's passport for stamping.

"When he was moving off to the car, I accordingly asked him for it, which seemed to annoy him, and I was given a fairly rude answer by Marshal Sokolovsky to the effect that passports were all nonsense and quite unnecessary."

Monty was driven off still with his passport, leaving a big row in which the angry customs official told Selby he would have to get hold of it and bring it to the airport at once.

"After a great deal of bother I agreed to send it out next day after they had threatened that there might be difficulties when Monty left if this were not done."

The story was censored from press accounts, but one slipped through and appeared in the Daily Mail.

Other postings were to Bolivia and Pakistan. In Bolivia, there was a royal visitor in the shape of Prince Philip, who insisted on driving himself on the treacherous roads with hairpin bends high in the Andes, which he did at considerable speed but fine judgment. In La Paz, he drove so fast that two of his motorcycle escort dropped out.

Selby wrote home: "He is a most impressive and easy person to get on with, very witty, at the same time remarkably knowledgeable about every subject under the sun, for example discussing aircraft dynamics and the various species of birdlife in South America."

"From Communism to Community: Memoirs of a Diplomat and Teacher," is available from Pengwern Books, Fish Street, Shrewsbury, and online from Waterstones, Foyles, AbeBooks, Amazon and YouCaxton Publications.