The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
Ben Macintyre
Viking, 368 pages, Rs 899
Last year’s sensational headlines about the attempted murder of former Soviet spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia added a twist to the tumultuous post-Cold War relations between Europe and Russia. Mr Skripal, who inadvertently inhaled near lethal quantities of a nerve agent called Novichok planted in his home by Russian agents, had been a Russian military intelligence officer who had spied for the British intelligence services in the nineties. Arrested in Russia, he was given asylum in the UK