George Blake, who died last year aged 98, is less well known than his fellow spies educated at Cambridge. He was not recruited by his peer group, he operated alone, he was not part of the Establishment and perhaps, as a result, he was treated more harshly than his fellow traitors.

An MI6 officer, apparently recruited by the Russians after being captured in 1950 during the Korean War, he was himself betrayed by a defector, Michael Goleniewski, in 1961. Sentenced to 42 years in prison, he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 with the help of two peaceniks and an Irish petty criminal and spent over 50 years in Russian exile.

Simon Kuper, a Financial Times journalist, was given a three-hour interview in 2012 on the understanding that it would only appear in the Netherlands and that any book based on it would only appear after Blake’s death.

This is the result, supplemented by reading in the secondary literature, as well as newly discovered material on Blake’s wartime career in the Dutch Resistance, good use of Stasi files, interviews with a Dutch radio journalist and a documentary made in 2015.

Born in Rotterdam in 1922 and brought up there and by a Communist uncle in Cairo, Blake was caught between various identities: his father, a Levantine Jew from Constantinople, had acquired British citizenship. Kuper clearly established a good relationship with Blake and their shared background – part Dutch, part Jewish, part British – helps him understand Blake’s own ambivalent attitude to Britain and how Russia offered the homeland that his mixed heritage had denied him.

George Blake, who died last year aged 98, is less well known than his fellow spies educated at Cambridge. He was not recruited by his peer group, he operated alone, he was not part of the Establishment and perhaps, as a result, he was treated more harshly than his fellow traitors.

An MI6 officer, apparently recruited by the Russians after being captured in 1950 during the Korean War, he was himself betrayed by a defector, Michael Goleniewski, in 1961. Sentenced to 42 years in prison, he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 with the help of two peaceniks and an Irish petty criminal and spent over 50 years in Russian exile.

Simon Kuper, a Financial Times journalist, was given a three-hour interview in 2012 on the understanding that it would only appear in the Netherlands and that any book based on it would only appear after Blake’s death.

This is the result, supplemented by reading in the secondary literature, as well as newly discovered material on Blake’s wartime career in the Dutch Resistance, good use of Stasi files, interviews with a Dutch radio journalist and a documentary made in 2015.

Born in Rotterdam in 1922 and brought up there and by a Communist uncle in Cairo, Blake was caught between various identities: his father, a Levantine Jew from Constantinople, had acquired British citizenship. Kuper clearly established a good relationship with Blake and their shared background – part Dutch, part Jewish, part British – helps him understand Blake’s own ambivalent attitude to Britain and how Russia offered the homeland that his mixed heritage had denied him.

Read the full review at HistoryToday.com.

Andrew Lownie is the author of Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess (Hodder & Stoughton, 2016).