Sonya's story

Book review of Agent Sonya: Lover, Mother, Soldier, Spy

Any spy fiction writer would kill to create a character like Ursula Kuczynski. But Kuczynski was no fictional character. She was one of Joseph Stalin’s most dedicated agents, the famous courier for the British-German atomic physicist Klaus Fuchs to pass on technology that helped the Soviets build the atom bomb.

Ben MacIntyre’s Agent Sonya was published in September, five months after a fine biography of Fuchs —  Atomic Spy: The Lives of Klaus Fuchs  by Nancy Thorndike Greenspan — and could serve as a companion volume. 

Mr MacIntyre has been a lively chronicler of the colourful world of British wartime espionage, writing