Betrayal
The spycop debacle is another nail in the Met’s coffin
In 2010, Mark Kennedy, a tattooed social justice warrior, was exposed as an undercover police officer. In this guise he…
Emperor for three years: the doomed reign of Maximilian I of Mexico
On 8 April 1864 an Austrian archduke with a penchant for daydreaming agreed to be emperor of Mexico. As Edward…
A late fling: Free Love, by Tessa Hadley, reviewed
Tessa Hadley is the queen of the portentous evening, the pregnant light and the carefully composed life unwittingly waiting to…
Why did the Allies dismiss the idea of a German resistance movement?
In 1928, a modest young lecturer from Wilwaukee, Mildred Harnack, née Fish, arrived in Berlin to begin her PhD in…
Sleeping with the enemy: the wartime story of ‘La Chatte’
The name ‘Carré’ immediately evokes the shadowy world of espionage. Ironically, however, few people today have heard of the real…
Betrayal was a routine business for George Blake
Kim Philby once remarked to the journalist Murray Sayle that ‘to betray, you must first belong. I never belonged’. Kim,…
A hazardous crossing: The Man Who Saw Everything, by Deborah Levy, reviewed
Serious readers and serious writers have a contract with each other,’ Deborah Levy once wrote. ‘We live through the same…
A blast from the past
If you had to choose one book that both typified spy fiction and celebrated what the genre was capable of…
A clash of loyalties
If someone was to lob the name Antigone about, many of us would smile and nod while trying to remember…
The infamous four
Most books about British traitors feature those who spied for Russia before and during the Cold War, making it easy…
Why George Bernard Shaw was an overrated babbler
When I was a kid, I was taught by a kindly old Jesuit whose youth had been beguiled by George…
