Singer de Burgh's parents were British spies working from Malta

Singer Chris de Burgh’s parents were involved in Cold War espionage, according to findings by the TV show Who Do You Think You Are? which traces personalities’ family trees and their secrets.

According to details in the Irish Mail on Sunday, Maeve de Burgh – who grew up in India where her father was a general in the Indian army – spent her days in Malta training British spies to fight the communist regime in Albania.

She later married Colonel Charles Davison, who had parachuted into Japanese-occupied Burma during World War II, sabotaging the regime by blowing up supply routes. The couple moved to Argentina, where Davison had grown up, and their two sons, Christopher and Richard, were born there. But a strained relationship with Maeve's mother-in-law, combined with the declining farming industry in Argentina, prompted the family to return to Europe.

“Getting a job was a problem until the army offered him - well, us, really - a post in Malta,” Maeve said. “I thought this was rather exciting. They trained us in coding – the codes were practically unbreakable unless you had the master code book. It consisted of rows and rows of figures, from which you added or subtracted numbers according to the instructions you were given.”

Maeve and her husband were being trained to help them, in turn, train spies. They were part of 'Operation Valuable', one of the earliest Cold War attempts to overthrow the communist regime in Albania by training undercover insurgents.

They moved to Malta in 1951 and settled into Rabat. Davison was given the official title 'Pioneer Training and Disposal Unit', although the post was actually intelligence work, centred on training young Albanian volunteers who were intent on freeing their country from the grip of communism.

In addition to coding, Davison taught the men how to handle guns and explosives, as well as how to survive on the run and other skills. “The young men were being trained in Malta to operate behind communist lines in Albania and make life difficult for the communist authorities,” Maeve said.

“I did a lot of secretarial work, including coding and decoding messages both to and from Albania to London. Col Davison trained the young recruits in explosives in an isolated fort.”

It became difficult for them to make friends in Malta, as they couldn't answer questions about their jobs, and they worked at maintaining a distance from their neighbours to avoid accidentally revealing any information. One person with whom they did socialise, however, was Lord Louis Mountbatten - who was at the time Supreme Commander of the Nato fleet, based in Malta.