Historians often write beautifully and are highly literate. But they don’t create new genres. MacIntyre has pulled off the feat of writing biography, history and thrillers: simultaneously.

He chooses remarkable and well documented stories. This provides a structure to work on and avoid the tedium of heavy-lifting in the archives. The provenance of his stories is established before he starts and he pours magic onto them. Unlike historians writing history MacIntyre doesn’t burden readers with footnotes. The have confidence that they’re unnecessary. General readers trust MacIntyre in a way that historians probably wouldn’t.

Agent Sonya is a wonderful story of human interest. She abandoned her son for the greater cause of Communism!!!!; transformed herself from an upper middle-class German Jew into an Oxfordshire housewife; a Jewish atheist who attended a village Church; and an international spy who used radio links with Moscow. And this isn’t mentioning her love-life, which was always secondary to her service to Communism.

A superb book warmly recommended.