Synopses & Reviews
The "master storyteller" (San Francisco Chronicle) behind the New York Times bestseller The Spy and the Traitor uncovers the true story behind the Cold War's most intrepid female spy.
In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a
thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and
her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was
friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent.
By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her
neighbors in the village knew little about her.
They didn't know that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence
officer. They didn't know that her husband was also a spy, or that she
was running powerful agents across Europe. Behind the façade of her
picturesque life, Burton was a dedicated Communist, a Soviet colonel,
and a veteran agent, gathering the scientific secrets that would enable
the Soviet Union to build the bomb.
This true-life spy story is a masterpiece about the woman
code-named "Sonya." Over the course of her career, she was hunted by the
Chinese, the Japanese, the Nazis, MI5, MI6, and the FBI — and she evaded
them all. Her story reflects the great ideological clash of the
twentieth century — between Communism, Fascism, and Western
democracy — and casts new light on the spy battles and shifting
allegiances of our own times.
With unparalleled access to Sonya's diaries and correspondence
and never-before-seen information on her clandestine activities, Ben
Macintyre has conjured a page-turning history of a legendary secret
agent, a woman who influenced the course of the Cold War and helped
plunge the world into a decades-long standoff between nuclear
superpowers.
Review
"[Ben] Macintyre is
fastidious about tradecraft details....[He] has become the
preeminent popular chronicler of British intelligence history because he
understands the essence of the business."
David Ignatius, The Washington Post
Review
"Macintyre at once exalts and subverts the myths of spycraft, and has a keen eye for absurdity."
The New Yorker
Review
"Macintyre writes with novelistic flair."
Entertainment Weekly
About the Author
Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for
The Times (U.K.) and the bestselling author of
The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and
Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.