An appeal court in Britain has ruled that a man convicted of spying for the Soviet Union should not be allowed to profit from a book he wrote about his years with British intelligence.

The seventy-four-year-old former spy, George Blake, who lives in Moscow, has already received over eighty-thousand dollars in royalties for his autobiography, "No Other Choice".

But the court has barred his publishers from sending him the rest of the profits, amounting to nearly one-hundred-and-fifty thousand dollars.

In overturning an earlier judgement in favour of Mr Blake, the appeal judges said the ordinary member of the public would be shocked if the courts were powerless to prevent him profiting from his criminal conduct.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service