Alan Judd

‘The Greatest Traitor: The Secret Lives of Agent George Blake’, by Roger Hermiston

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  • The Greatest Traitor: The Secret Lives of Agent George Blake

    Roger Hermiston

    Aurum, pp. 362

The spy George Blake, doyen of traitors, turned 90 last year. Almost blind, he lives with his Russian wife outside Moscow on an SVR (KGB in old money) reservation.  Much has changed since 1961 when he was sentenced to 42 years in British jails — the ideology he believed in discredited, the empire he spied for dismembered — but he remains convinced he was right to betray, as this thorough and thoughtful biography shows.

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