Roland Philipps

Donald Maclean was a star diplomat, an establishment insider and a keeper of some of the West's greatest secrets. He was also a Russian spy, driven by passionately held beliefs, whose betrayal and defection to Moscow reverberated for decades. Christened `Orphan' by his Russian recruiter, Maclean was the perfect spy and Britain's most gifted traitor. But as he leaked huge amounts of top-secret intelligence, an international code-breaking operation was rapidly closing in on him. Moments before he was unmasked, Maclean vanished. Drawing on a wealth of previously classified material, Roland Philipps now tells this story for the first time in full. Philipps unravels Maclean's character and contradictions: a childhood that was simultaneously liberal and austere; a Cambridge education mixing in Communist circles; a polished diplomat with a tendency to wild binges; a marriage complicated by secrets; an accelerated rise through the Foreign Office and, above all, a gift for deception. Taking us back to the golden age of espionage, A Spy Named Orphan reveals the impact of one of the most dangerous and enigmatic Soviet agents of the twentieth century, whose actions heightened the tensions of the Cold War.

Donald Maclean was a star diplomat, an establishment insider and a keeper of some of the West's greatest secrets. He was also a Russian spy... Codenamed `Orphan' by his Russian recruiter, Maclean was Britain's most gifted traitor. But as he leaked huge amounts of top-secret intelligence, an international code-breaking operation was rapidly closing in on him. Moments before he was unmasked, Maclean escaped to Moscow. Drawing on a wealth of previously classified material, A Spy Named Orphan now tells this story for the first time in full, revealing the character and devastating impact of perhaps the most dangerous Soviet agent of the twentieth century.

VICTOIRE is about Mathilde Carre - codenamed 'La Chatte', the cat, then known as Agent Victoire - who was the exceptionally charismatic and daring founder of the 'Big Network'. This was the first Allied intelligence network in Occupied France, which soon grew central to Resistance efforts and to be a lifeline of crucial information to an isolated Britain. But her allegiances become more complex when the network is rolled up by the Germans and she makes a fateful compromise. She first becomes a double agent before later trying to persuade the British to back her as a triple agent. Mathilde's story and that of the network she helped build has never been fully told before. This book will draw on a wide range of sources including recently declassified material to do that. (Elusive to the last, she was thought to have died in 1970 but may in fact have lived as a recluse until 2007 and the age of 98.) VICTOIRE shares the themes of compromise and duplicity which Roland explored with such success in A SPY NAMED ORPHAN. As he writes, 'Mathilde Carre's life is a three-act tragedy: the woman who does right, the woman who does wrong, the woman who tries to redeem herself but can never be fully trusted.'