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MOSCOW (Reuters) - George Blake, reviled in Britain as a traitor to crown and country, has been honoured by his adopted Russia with a television eulogy marking the double agent's 80th birthday.

Rossiya state television lauded him as a war veteran, and broadcast a rare interview with the Dutch-born former British spy.

"The years I have spent in Russia have been the happiest of my life, and the most important thing for me is that I feel at home among the Russians," he said.

Blake escaped from a London jail in 1966 while serving a 42-year sentence for passing secrets to the Soviet Union, including details of a tunnel the British and the Americans were building under Berlin to spy on telephone traffic.

Blake, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard and speaking precise Russian with a strong English accent, approved of Russian politics with former spy Vladimir Putin at the helm.

"I think that the relationship between the state and the secret services with myself and with other people like myself is very positive," he said.

Lieutenant-General Leonid Shebarshin, former head of Soviet foreign intelligence, told Rossiya: "Blake is an example for all intelligence agents over several generations."

The television said Britain had unsuccessfully sought Blake's extradition after the fall of communism in 1991. British courts have prevented him from receiving royalties from sales of his autobiography.

HAPPY IN MOSCOW

He left three children behind in Britain when he broke out of the high security Wormwood Scrubs prison, but he said he was happy with his wife Ida, children and grandson in Moscow.

He works in an international politics and economics institute.

"I read a lot of history, and I am lucky that my wife likes to read to me. My eyes aren't so good these days," he said.

Blake, given the top Soviet decoration, the Order of Lenin, when he arrived in Moscow in 1966, has said he helped to avert nuclear armageddon by strengthening the Soviet Union and helping to preserve a balance of power.

He admits handing the Soviet Union the names of 600 agents, but denied they were executed. Britain says his defection led to the death of several agents, and some British observers say every year of his prison service represented a human life.

He appeared nostalgic for the certainties of the Cold War, and said last month's siege in Moscow, when Chechen rebels seized a theatre and more than 700 hostages, was a sign of a worrying trend in world affairs.

"The world is much more dangerous now because the new enemy is so cunning," he said. "Before, the two sides were predictable. Now, peaceful citizens can be struck without warning in any part of the world."

But life in wintry Moscow, he said, was still pleasant.

"I love snow and I love skiing," he told Rossiya. "But I do it less now."