A Spy’s London

In ‘this remarkable book’ (as intelligence historian Nigel West describes it in his Foreword), the reader will be struck by the vibrancy of history made real. Author Roy Berkeley has gone behind the facades of ordinary buildings, in the city that West calls ‘the espionage capital of the World’, to remind us that the history of intelligence has often been made in such mundane places. With his evocative photographs and compelling observations, Berkeley ensures that we will never see the streets of London - or these particular actors on the stage of history - in quite the same way again.

The 136 sites are organized into 21 manageable walks. Among the sites: the modest hotel suite where an eager Red Army colonel poured out his secrets to a team of British and American intelligence officers; the royal residence where one of the most slippery Soviet moles was at home for years; the London home where an MP plotting to appease Hitler was arrested on his front steps in 1940.