The Spy and the Traitor

Ben Macintyre has written a fantastic factual book, [b:The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War 37542581 The Spy and the Traitor The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War Ben Macintyre https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1522906662l/37542581.SY75.jpg 59145602] , which reads like a thriller novel which you simply cannot put down. The book is a testament to the significant contribution Oleg Gordievsky made to ensuring the Cold War remained without escalation into all out war and helped ensure effective diplomatic relationships could be established between the USSR and NATO allies. Ben Macintyre has diligently researched the subject matter drawing on open source information, first hand accounts and other documents in order to develop a coherent story that immerses the reader into the various situations Oleg Gordievsky found himself in. The story provides a roller coaster of emotions providing a visceral glimpse into the Cold cold war spy world where the stakes are at their highest.This fascinating novel is worth putting on your reading list , I am certain you will not be disappointed.

An engaging read about a KGB agent who fed secrets to the British for over a decade. I like how a lot of this is both thrilling and rather mundane compared to a Hollywood “spy” story and the details of things like how the British were able to use the information he gave them without giving him away and things like how little miscommunications or inconveniences can derail a plan are really interesting.

I believe this author has written a few other real-life spy books so I'll probably check another one out in the near future.

A gripping account of Cold War rivalries

Oleg Gordievsky, the subject of this dazzling non-fiction thriller. He was the most significant British agent of the Cold War era. For 11 years, between 1974 and 1985. he passed Russian seems to MI6 while working for the KGB, first in Copenhagen and later in London.

Even more remarkably, he became the only British agent ever to be exfiltrated out of Russia. This was after his KGB bosses had grown suspicious and recalled him to Moscow. Gordievsky story has been told before, not least in his own gripping 1995 memoir. In this meticulously researched book Ben Macintrye's complements and enhances that account. He does this by focusing on the most thought-provoking aspects of each story. Macintrye bases the narrative on interviews with its subject who is now 79 and lives in the Home Counties. He is still under sentence of death. The story is also enhanced with details from the MI6 officer involved in the case too.

Gordievsky, the son of an NKVD colonel, was at first an enthusiastic recruit to the KGB. Doubts only began to surface after he was posted to Copenhagen in the mid-1960s. The Danish capital was so much richer than Moscow, while his love of books and classical music opened his mind to new ideas. Gordievsky took his first step towards defecting after the Red Army had crushed the Prague Spring of 1968. He vented his fury to his wife, over a phone line that he knew to be bugged by Danish intelligence. Over time, the message got through to MI6, and a tall, friendly Englishman recruited him over a lunch.

During his active years, Gordievsky provided unimaginable value to the UK. He revealed, for instance that in the 1980s the paranoid Soviet leadership was planning a preemptive nuclear strike on the West. He also exposed various Soviet agents of influence, such as Labour's Michael Foot. Foot allegedly dined with, and took cash payments from, the KGB.

Gordievsky's career culminated with a plot twist so implausible that it could happen only in real life. He realised that the authorities were onto him, and triggered a long-prepared escape plan. An MI6 agent smuggled him out of Russia in the boot of a family car, and he was brought back to London for a hero's welcome.

At a time when the machinations of Russian intelligence dominates the news, this exciting book offers a refreshing reversal. In this story, it's the Russians who get turned inside out by a British mole.

For author Ben MacIntyre, Oleg Gordievsky belongs in the pantheon of world changing spies. A KGB colonel at the height of the Cold War, he was in fact an agent for the British Secret Service. The book opens with his flat in Moscow being bugged, cameras installed and a light coating of radioactive dust sprinkled on his clothes and shoes. Oleg is returning to Moscow and it's clear his traitorous activity of the past decade has been discovered. The noose is tightening and Oleg is quickly running out of options.

MacIntyre is a meticulous researcher and interviewed nearly every British agent working with Gordievsky and several Russians as well. He creates a tense historical account that reads like a slow burning thriller. But this isn't movie spy-craft and what becomes critical to Oleg's story is a Mars bar, a Safeway bag and a soiled diaper.

Mundane details certainly, Oleg is turned while playing badminton of all things, but let's not discount the world-changing effect he had on geo-political relations. He may very well have averted nuclear disaster and helped usher in a new age of glasnost. An eye opening account of old world spy-craft where the KGB, CIA and MI6 converge.

A full review for our Non-Fiction November pick here: https://youtu.be/qoz3wJAL-Xs

This was edge-of-my seat good. Even though I had looked up what happened to this man, I still found myself anxious about his safety. This would be a great book for a long car ride, especially because it's written such that a number of people, personalities, and genders would enjoy it together. I learned a few things and found myself fulling engaged. Although I read it (listened to it) alone, I told my spouse all about it each evening.