INTELLIGENT SPY'S HANDBOOK

From Francis Walsingham born 1532, Sir George Downing, poets and playwrights like Christopher Marlowe and Andrew Marvell, Cromwell's other spymaster John Thurloe, and Wellington's code breaker George Scovell, T.E. Lawrence to James Bond, intelligence work has always drawn an eclectic mix of personalities - ideological zealots, master manipulators, egotists, and cold-blooded operators with the ability to manipulate, deceive and remain cold - producing some of history's most compelling figures. Here are too Bolshevik agents and femmes fatales like Catherine Walston for Graham Greene and Ann Rothermere for Ian Fleming. Renwick provides an overview of the biggest names in the world of espionage, with a wonderful eye for the details that bring each of them to life. We hear, for instance, of how Kim Philby, to have fun at the expense of his colleagues, kept a photograph in his office of Mount Ararat, taken from the Soviet side. We see how the audacious, far-fetched ideas of the naval officer Ian Fleming, aside from creating the most famous of all spies, may have actually inspired the real-life Operation Mincemeat. And the darker side of some of our more heroic stories is exposed, from the chemical castration of Alan Turing to the personal sacrifices Oleg Gordievsky made to become Britain's most successful Soviet mole. Brilliantly weaves together the allure of spy fiction and the real art of espionage. 8 pages of colour and mono plates, 256 pages.