Britain spent 20 years licking her wounds, determined for revenge. He revealed a global network of spies acting against Western interests, forcing a Royal Commission to study the implications.) In the 1960s, a Soviet double agent, Kim Philby, defected to Moscow, leading to the deaths of his colleagues and destroying the British spy network against Moscow’s interests. (The start of the Cold War can be timed to an event more than 70 years ago when Igor Gouzenko defected from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa days after the end of the Second World War. The recent poisoning cases of Sergei and Yulia Skripal remind us of the long tail that continues to wag long after the official end of the Cold War, a time when the world split in two. The Spy and The Traitor represents Macintyre’s finest work to date and has the makings of an instant screenplay.

It carries all the qualities of what Macintyre has so justly become known for – precise research leading to even-handed assessments, and, where possible, using first-hand accounts to reduce the level of speculation that is otherwise so enticing to those attempting to understand the past. Portions of Gordievsky’s life have been retold since his dramatic escape from the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but only now, with publication of Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and The Traitor, do we get the full meaning of the Gordievsky file.įans of Macintyre’s previous non-fiction accounts such as Operation Mincemeat and Agent Zigzag will pounce on this latest offering.

The spy and the traitor ben macintyre