Best books… Charles Cumming
Award-winning thriller writer Charles Cumming picks his six favourite books on espionage. His third Thomas Kell spy thriller, A Divided Spy, has just been published in paperback by Harpercollins at £7.99
Naples ’44 by Norman Lewis, 1978 (Eland £10.99). All of the chaos, black comedy and pity of war captured in the diaries of a British intelligence officer posted to Naples shortly after the German army’s withdrawal. Every page of this masterpiece has a sentence that takes your breath away.
Red Heat by Alex von Tunzelmann, 2011 (Simon & Schuster £12.99). Did the CIA turn Castro into a communist? That’s one of the questions raised by this extraordinary book, which examines why America propped up dictatorships in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic during the Cold War – the consequences of which are still felt today.
The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew, 2009 (Penguin £16.99). This officially sanctioned tome may not be warts and all, but it’s as close as we are likely to get to the inner workings of the Security Service. Andrew’s exhaustive history covers both World Wars, the Cambridge spy fiasco – and plenty more.
MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service by Gordon Corera, 2011 (W&N £9.99). A fascinating history of MI6, from postwar Vienna to the dodgy dossier. Corera, the BBC’S security correspondent, spoke at length to Daphne Park, one of the first women to work for MI6.
Soldier Spy by Tom Marcus, 2016 (Penguin £7.99). Revelatory spy memoirs are rare. Marcus, a pseudonym, was an MI5 officer for ten years and provides a detailed, fast-paced account of the war being waged against Islamist terror on the streets of Britain. Required reading in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks.
Red Notice by Bill Browder, 2015 (Corgi £8.99). An investigation into the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who testified against officials in Moscow’s Interior Ministry – and paid with his life. In this troubling exposé, Browder reveals the venality and ruthlessness at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s secret state.