Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms: The Spyhunter, the Fashion Designer & the Man From Moscow

by Paul Willetts

Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Room provides the first comprehensive account of what was once hailed by a leading American newspaper as the greatest spy story of World War II. This dramatic yet little-known saga, replete with telephone taps, kidnappings, and police surveillance, centres on the furtive escapades of Tyler Kent, a handsome, womanising 28-year-old Ivy League graduate, who doubles as a US Embassy code clerk and Soviet agent.

Against the backdrop of London high society during the so-called Phoney War, Kent’s life intersects with the lives of the book’s two other memorably flamboyant protagonists. One of those is Maxwell Knight, an urbane, endearingly eccentric MI5 spyhunter. The other is Anna Wolkoff, a White Russian fashion designer and Nazi spy whose outfits are worn by the Duchess of Windsor and whose parents are friends of the British royal family. Wolkoff belongs to a fascist secret society called the Right Club, which aims to overthrow the British government. Her romantic entanglement with Tyler Kent gives her access to a secret correspondence between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, a correspondence that has the potential to transform the outcome of the war.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Espionage, World War II, Politics, War, British Literature

480 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2015

About the author

Paul Willetts is the author of two previous works of non-fiction – Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia and North Soho 999. Since making his literary debut in 2003, he’s edited four much-praised collections of writing by the bohemian dandy, Julian Maclaren-Ross. He has also compiled and worked as co-photographer on Teenage Flicks, a jokey celebration of Subbuteo, featuring contributions by Will Self, Graham Taylor, David Baddiel and others. His journalism has appeared in The Independent, The Times, The TLS, The Spectator, The Independent on Sunday and other publications.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly fascinating tale of intrigue, espionage and treason, which is set in the early days of the second world war. The three main figures include Anna Wolkoff, a couturier whose White Russian parents ran the popular Russian Tea Rooms, a young American named Tyler Gatewood Kent and Maxwell Knight; possibly better known as ‘M. This book ranges from a few years before the war and takes us up to 1945; with an epilogue which explains what happened to all the people we meet along the way. Although this is a long read, it is utterly engrossing and I was sorry when I finally got to the end.

The author unfolds the events of those years methodically, but his writing is never dry. In fact, at times this almost reads as a thriller. We begin in Russia, where Tyler Kent works in the translation section of the American Embassy. Resentful and arrogant, he begins to spy for money and, when sent to London, he is displeased at his new posting (he would have much preferred the Berlin Embassy, which had some profitable currency scams in place) and is soon up to his old tricks again. Handsome, charming and certainly always wishing to live beyond his means, Tyler Kent had no qualms whatsoever at copying extremely sensitive documents and telegrams; many between Churchill and Roosevelt.

It is easy to look back on the war with hindsight and not comprehend the obvious concern with which Britain imagined it was about to be invaded. With German troops marching into some countries virtually unchallenged, there was a feeling of ‘when’ England was to be invaded, rather than ‘if’ it would be. In 1939 and 1940, there was an air of crisis in the country and a real fear of imminent invasion – as well as the concern of Fifth Columnists, who were eager to welcome the invading Germans. Maxwell Knight ran many agents whose job it was to infiltrate groups who were acting in possibly treasonous ways. One of the groups that Maxwell Knight was interested in was the Right Club and Anna Wolkoff was recruiting for them.

What follows is an investigation, in which Knight is led to Tyler’s activities through his meeting with Anna Wolkoff. Wolkoff was extremely involved in the right wing politics of those times. On the fringe of the aristocratic world, Wolkoff was struggling financially and as resentful and unhappy as Tyler Kent with her reduced circumstances. While bemoaning her lot, she eagerly attempted to involve virtually anyone she met into her political orbit and happily spent her time daubing anti Semitic slogans on shops and busying herself in intrigues and secrets. Knight believed her dangerous and spent a great deal of time investigating her and her circle.

This book has many characters that you will know, from Dennis Wheatley to William Joyce and Oswald Mosley, to those you will not - agents who did potentially dangerous undercover work without recognition. Knight certainly respected his agents and disliked the way they were looked down on by government officials. He was patient, careful and willing to give his agents time to come up with results. I found this an extremely interesting read and if you have any interest in espionage or in the early years of the war, then you will certainly enjoy this very much. This shows how widespread fascist views were at the beginning of the war – with some extremely wealthy and powerful people in England expressing what can only be viewed as treasonable sentiments, and how people like Maxwell Knight, and his agents, were aware of the potential damage these people could cause; especially in the event of invasion. I recommend this book highly and think it would make both a wonderful individual and book group read. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

[Nigeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Willetts has surpassed himself with this stunning book.

There's much to enjoy in this comprehensive account of one of the greatest spy stories of World War 2.

The book's three main protagonists (alongside a host of fascinating supporting characters) are:

- Maxwell Knight, an endearingly eccentric MI5 spyhunter who works alone and largely unsupported. Knight’s tireless work uncovers a plot by fifth columnists - many of whom are unpleasant anti-semetic, Nazi approving toffs - hoping to facilitate a Nazi takeover in Britain

- Anna Wolkoff, a White Russian fashion designer and Nazi sympathiser whose parents are acquainted with the British royal family. Wolkoff belongs to a fascist group called the Right Club, which aims to overthrow the British government. Wolkoff becomes romantically entangled with...

- Tyler Kent, a handsome, womanising 28-year-old Ivy League graduate, whose work as a US Embassy code clerk gives him access to a secret correspondence between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. This correspondence, were it to have been made public, could have changed the outcome of World War 2.

"Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms: The Spyhunter, the Fashion Designer & the Man From Moscow" frequently reads more like a thriller than a non-fiction book. Paul Willetts is especially skilled at recreating the era in London.

As I worked my way through this book I frequently pondered just how much research Paul Willetts must have undertaken. The answer comes at the book’s conclusion in a section entitled ‘Sources’: "around a million words of notes, amassed over a period in excess of ten years”. Paul Willetts goes on to explain that whilst the finished book possesses the feel of a novel it is not an exercise in so-called ‘faction’ and is unequivocally a work of non-fiction.

The end result is a methodical, thorough book that, whilst lengthy, is engrossing, compelling and fascinating from start to finish. Highly recommended.

5/5

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a mildly interesting story here but it's lost in a welter of extraneous detail, going far beyond the requirements of a fully fleshed out depiction. I suspect it was in part to disguise the relative unimportance of the whole business in the grand scheme of the war and espionage; Willetts tried to make the case that Kent potentially controlled the outcome of the 1940 US presidential election, but that's a reach way too far.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a bit of genre buster. It is certainly not fiction (the research put into it by the author makes me believe wholly his assertion that nothing in the book is invented) yet it reads like a thriller in some respects. Nor is it a traditional history insofar as it lacks an analytical aspect.

I struggled to place this excellent and innovative book until I considered one of the oldest literary forms of all, the chronicle - a chronicle in this case that is carefully crafted to tell as much of the story as possible about a contained (limited in time and space) but important historical event.

The story weaves together the lives of the arrogant young embassy clerk Tyler Kent, the embittered and fashionable Russian exile Anna Wolkoff and the somewhat eccentric but highly competent spymaster Max Knight in a tale of wartime espionage.

But what Willetts does that is a little different is to ensure that the convergence of these personalities takes place in something like real time in very short chapters with a wealth of detail about what it must have been like to have lived in particular times and places.

Nearly all history that is written suffers from one problem - retrospective wisdom. Because we know what happened, it looks as if it was inevitable that it should have happened that way. We think those who did not ride the tide of history to be more deluded (or wicked) than they were.

Because of his methodology (which probably only works on the relatively small-scale), we see the state of things not entirely with hindsight. These people are shown to have been acting in the reasonable belief that the outcomes that they wanted were possible.

For two of these people, the outcome was a Fascist Britain. Willetts gives us a sense of how a very small group of people weakly connected to the British Establishment might have thought this possible and, politically, have moved in the direction of treachery as a result.

After all, a successful German invasion or a shift in the political balance in Parliament or a coup by a wider range of sympathisers in the military or police (we are still only two decades from a war that had its blood and soil survivors) could well have resulted in such an outcome.

In actuality, the formal history tells us that our hindsight was not all wrong. The fascist activists were small in number and divided, Churchill had the confidence of the House (notably the Labour Party) and the British Empire was resilient and secretly backed by the US.

But this was not entirely clear to people living in that mess called day-to-day life. Willetts certainly brings out the stakes for men like Max Knight (himself once a Fascist sympathiser) whose execution would undoubtedly have resulted if the Nazis had invaded.

The key point is that people were playing for very high stakes. The material the Nazi sympathisers were extracting from the US Embassy could have resulted in a serious political crisis for Roosevelt and the possible loss of his power just when he was needed by the British Empire.

In theory, history could have been changed (for the worse) by this tiny group of amateurs although my own instinct is that Ambassador Kennedy's decisive actions against Tyler Kent probably indicates that the American political machine might have defused any such crisis in practice.

But, again, no one was to know that then and, because it never happened, we cannot know that now. It is reasonable for us to fear the worst. it was reasonable for Max Knight to fear the worst.

I have concentrated on the 'story line' but this experimental book is also very well written - at least when the material allows Willetts to show his talent. Sometimes the Chronicle aspect militates against this because of his self-denying ordinance on fictionalising matters.

Where his literary skills come in relate not to the plotting (since the plot is set by history) but in recreating three personalities and their respective entourages and in allowing material facts in the wider world to give us some sense of how they approached their decision-making.

It is the many minor characters - lazy and bored young embassy officials, embittered White Russians and middle class English women and men and somewhat cypher-like but efficient security officers - that make up the story. We are presented with a world we believe in.

I cannot speak of a weakness in the book because it works entirely within its own ambitions but I have said that, if it is not fiction, it is also not entirely history (or at least not history as we have understood it since Herodotus and Thucydides).

History is an interpretative as much as it is a narrative form. The history is directed at a purpose - ideological in 'bad' history, explanatory in most history and revealing of our human condition in the best of it. This book 'tells' in preference to 'explains' (more like journalism in this respect).

Willetts seems interested in telling a story from which we can draw what we want for ourselves rather than drawing an obvious moral or providing a grand narrative for us. We can even see the author's own prejudices and interpretations without him foisting them on us as truth.

For example, because the story is contained and deliberately limited, hares are not raised about the more double-dealing aspects of the security apparat (such as the MI5 subvention to Joyce and what amounted to his calculated but politically necessary execution).

Nor does he see perhaps, as political practitioners will pick up straight away, the context of the drive to have a wide range of fascists interned. This was the security apparat seeking to extend its powers and solve its problems over the heads of the liberal values of the political class.

Even Churchill was uncomfortable with the actions of this arm of the system. We should be mindful that this apparat, in every country and at every time, has a propensity to use 'incidents' to limit our freedoms on a precautionary principle that suits its world view 'in our interest'. Hmmm!

In fact, the picture emerges of a British State that was extremely wary of using its own powers, very different in this respect from its opponent and even its allies - the US not excluded. Yet the evidence is here if you look that an arm of it is always ready to push the envelope.

Perhaps I am suspicious that Willetts was a little taken in by Max Knight but I cannot say I mind. Knight's opponents were far from pleasant people, perhaps weak and narcissistic rather than down right evil although there are hints of some truly evil types in their circle.

Over the whole story lurks a number of 'men of power' who could decide one things, one way or another, but who are not the primary subject of the story - Ambassador Kennedy, the proto-Quisling 'Jock' Ramsay and the higher up officials to whom Knight answered.

It is Ramsay about whom I want to know more. He was an outlier even within Fascist circles but I think we can take it at face value that this right-wing MP might easily have been Governor of Britain under Hitler and a nastier one than Mosley could ever be.

It is interesting to note that one of the pro-Nazi Right Club was a Labour MP. This reminds us that politics then (as now) was more complicated than the standard narrative - and should remind us that there is a militarist and liberal imperialist working class element to the Party even today.

The driver for all this - which is brought out well in the book - was a vicious antisemitism that is hard to understand in the days long before Israel started demonically pounding Gaza. The stickiness of late nineteenth and early twentieth century anti-semitism is another story.

Hitler's antisemitism, so absurd and off the wall to us today, encouraged a small coterie of British obsessives who seriously and sincerely thought that betraying the country was a greater good to save the nation and the empire from what they saw as the corrupting influence of the Jews.

So, all in all, a recommended book for those interested in espionage and in the history of pre-war and wartime Britain, with copious notes and references and one that actually reads well and is far from dry.

Many people who read this book and do not have the patience for Ian Kershaw or Angus Calder will come out of it with better understanding of early wartime Britain (and Europe) than they can ever have from relying on conventional thrillers. It certainly eases literary types into history!

One footnote: I would not be surprised to see this turned into a film. One of Willetts' books (a life of Paul Raymond) has already received this accolade but the way the book is written - as a narrative that 'chronicles' its events in segments - is already half way to a film script.

[DISCLAIMER: I know Paul Willetts and my copy is signed and personal but regular readers know that my reviews are reliable. However, I always knock off a star when I review books by people I know and like ... on principle - just in case. You can draw your own conclusions from this.]

[Roger Pettit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Twain's dictum that "truth is stranger than fiction" is not, of course, always true. But it can sometimes be, and the events recounted in Paul Willetts's absorbing 'Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms' prove the point. The product of almost 30 years' research (a fact that is itself mind-boggling), the book is an account of actual events that have been described as the greatest spy story of World War II. It depicts the attempt by British secret services operative Max Knight (on whom Ian Fleming apparently based his character M) to quell what seemed to be a surge of support for the Nazis and their views amongst a small group of upper-class Brits. The two other principal characters are Anna Wolkoff, a famous Russian fashion designer who has fallen on hard times financially and who belongs to an underground fascist society; and Tyler Kent, a young American diplomat who is a Russian agent.

Willetts skilfully and entertainingly portrays a world of spies, secrets, blackout curtains, ARP wardens, clandestine assignations, nightclubs and cocktail parties in wartime London. His book reads like something written by Eric Ambler - but with one significant difference: it's not fiction. Willetts is an excellent writer. He's very good at characterisation and has a deceptively simple and readable style that will have you turning the pages avidly. What could so easily have been a dry, functional account of what are admittedly fascinating goings-on is, in fact, a riveting read. I particularly liked the various snippets of information about day-to-day life in pre-war and wartime London, some of which were new to me. For instance, Willetts tells us that a large number of dangerous animals in London Zoo had to be killed because the impact of German bombing might have caused them to escape into nearby Regent's Park. He also reports that many people visited a veterinary surgeon to have their pets put down on the grounds that London would not be a suitable place for domestic animals once German bombs started falling. And British radio stations apparently dropped their usual weather reports in case the information assisted the Germans.

'Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms' is an extraordinary and enthralling story of conspiracy, intrigue and betrayal. It's beautifully told. I loved every single one of its almost 500 pages! 10/10.

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is amazingly thoroughly researched, with every detail of clothing, weather, location and characters' words drawn from documentary evidence. These details are very cleverly put together into a coherent and convincing text. For the first third of the book I loved this evocation of a particular period in history. Then I began to find the slow pace tedious and found it a real slog to finish the book, although I learned many interesting facts.
The book is structured around three characters and sections based on each of them interleave. After a while I longed for some variation in structure or pace.
Paul Willetts is clear that he wanted to write in this style, not 'faction' but historical research presented as fiction. I think this causes some problems around the role of the narrator. He writes in a very odd and dated style which adds to the period feel, but who then is the narrator? Is his view of things the truth? The 'invisible' narrator appears to be omniscient, but as we know from the epilogue and note on sources, actually isn't. I would have liked the process of research, the possibility of doubt to be more evident.

[Micebyliz]

This is a great read but it's dense! i think? that's the point though. Spying and counter spying and espionage take years if it's done well, so the details matter. That's what you get in this book/not quite a novel/true story. It seems like a novel but it's not? i really enjoyed it although my head fell over a few times. I kept feeling impatient (like that never happened before) 'will you please get out the door already?" how long does it take to button your coat for god's sake? just cross the damned street!!!
But it was all worth it in the end. And i'm glad i read it. I think it showed me that i have no patience, perhaps. Usually i love this kind of stuff :) Like Mr. Bean. You have to wait for the end for the payoff.
It was a different time and i tried to place myself there to get the atmosphere of WWII. Everyone is afraid and doesn't trust anyone else. It's not unlike today, really. Wait. no double negatives!!

[Tolkien InMySleep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fact written in a fictional style, Willetts plots the intrigues of British fascists at the outset of WW2. The deception and treason of the main players is quite breath-taking. How none of them were hanged, given the enormity of their crimes, is a perversion of natural justice. Their beloved nazi friends would have shown them no mercy if the situation was reversed. The fact that they continued to propagate anti-semitic views even after the truth of the holocaust was revealed speaks volumes for them.

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even my interest in spies and spying wasn't enough to keep me going through this pedestrianly-written book. If one of my former GCSE pupils had handed in something like this, I would have told them to delete half of the unnecessary adjectives and start using more complex sentence structure instead of the clunky simplistic phrases this author seems to love.

[Colby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, talk about "Truth is stranger ..."! Riveting, gossipy (amazing the well-known, even famous, Brits who were proto-fascists before WWII) and appalling - in the ineptitude revealed within the US/UK security services. Salient reading for anyone interested in twentieth century history.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overly detailed. 😥

[GrabAsia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read many books of non-fiction where the author is able to infuse an incredible element of us watching the scene as it unfolds, as if we were there. Paul Willetts book is certainly the best such one I have read in a long time.

Be it Anna Wolkoff’s clothes, Tyler Kent’s behavior when wooing a woman, Max Knight’s thoughts about how to manage Majorie and his other agents. Be it the weather at the time 75 years ago, the mood and the look of the street in London. The immediacy of the telling is wonderful. As he says at the end of the book, all of this comes from actual sources who saw what Anna was wearing and noticed how Tyler was behaving.

Mr Willetts has taken a single episode in World War II espionage and spun a page turning tale. To use the books full title, our main protagonists are Max (the spy hunter), Anna (the fashion designer), and Tyler (the man from Moscow). Their paths meet in about-to-be-blitzed London.

The spy hunter weaves his web carefully, and Anna and Tyler, only too obliging, get stuck in it. The web is meant to monitor and catch British fascists, and when Tyler gives copies of secret correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt, Anna passes it on to her fascist friends. The content of the telegrams, if exposed, would show Roosevelt was secretly supporting the British in ways going outside his authority. The US being in an isolationist mood, exposure would have meant the pro-British Roosevelt losing the upcoming US elections in November 1940. Without the lifeline Churchill got from Roosevelt, history may have been very different.

But that comes later. First Mr Willetts builds up the story intricately way, starting with the main characters, then spreading to their confederates page by page. We travel through Czarist Russia, the Communist Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, pre-war and war ravaged London. We meet spies, spy hunters, (former and current) aristocrats, diplomats, and people of all political beliefs.

Tyler’s life in the US embassy in Moscow, Anna’s life as a (soon gone) fashion designer, and Max’s diligent nurturing of his agents. Then Tyler and Anna meet, and their (or at least her) romance starts. As it blossoms, the exchange of secrets start, watched closely by Max’s agents who have inveigled themselves into the fascist world.

The climax is their arrest, followed by the anti-climax of them disowning all intentions of being disloyal. After a very gripping narrative so far, the incarceration of Anna and Tyler, and the subsequent lives of our 3 protagonists is less so, but understandably so.

I found some lovely nuggets as information, such as the British renaming “Lease-Lend” as “Lend-Lease”, the latter term having stuck. And that one of the illustrators of Max Knight’s later books on nature was a man named David Cornwell, better known as John le Carre.

A wonderful read I much enjoyed.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

About midway through British author Paul Willetts' "Rendevous at the Russian Tea Rooms", I felt like throwing the book against a wall and asking "Why didn't the American Foreign Service vet their employees? Why were ideologically suspicious employees allowed to basically leave the various embassies with 'secret documents' hidden on their bodies? Why weren't the outside activities of the employees at least somewhat checked on for suspicious relationships?" Willetts' excellent book is the second one I've read lately where both American and British embassy security was so lax.

Paul Willetts' book is set a bit in Moscow, but mostly in London in the last few pre-war years and the first year or so of the war. The three main characters are Max Knight from MI5 who "ran" agents in London; Anna Wolkoff a Russian-born dress designer who emigrated to London in the 1920's to escape the communists; and Tyler Kent, a young American embassy worker in Moscow and London, who was trying to make a buck to support a life-style he wanted to become accustomed to. Wolkoff and Kent were both Nazi sympathisers and both gave secrets to Berlin-based spy agencies. Max Knight was trying to track Wolkoff, Kent, and other British citizens and immigrants active in spying for Germany and promoting anti-Semitic actions in London.

Willetts' book is full of unpleasant people - both in thought and deed. Almost everyone was "on the make", for one reason or another. Money or ideological purity gave people near power reasons to betray Britain and/or the US to Germany. London's Russian Tea Rooms - not to be confused with the restaurant in New York City - in South Kensington was owned by Anna Wolkoff's exiled parents. The Russian ex-pat community gathered in the area, which was a hot-spot for anti-Communist activities. Willetts' follows the three main characters as they eventually merge into a spy case in the first years of the war. He's a careful writer - some readers might find the book slow going - but he brings the reader along to a case that fully boils by the end. For armchair historians, this book is a great read.

[Derek Collett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Willetts is a highly intelligent and very well-read chap. He has put his talents to good use here to write a thoroughly engrossing (true) story of Nazi-loving spies at large in London in the early stages of World War Two and of the eccentric, animal-loving MI5 man who monitors their treacherous activities and finally brings them to justice.

The depth of the author’s research is staggering and the book is consequently crammed full of fascinating detail. Some readers may perhaps consider that the narrative is a trifle too discursive in places but, speaking as a biographer, I thought that Willetts generally performed a fine balancing act with aplomb and managed to stay just the right side of the ‘what to include/what to omit’ divide.

This book functions on many levels. It is an absorbing spy story which at times reads almost like an Eric Ambler or Nigel Balchin novel; it is a bracing historical account of Britain around the time of its darkest hour; and also a fascinating documentary account of those far right groups (and there were plenty of them) that were spreading their poisonous propaganda on these shores in the late 1930s/early 1940s. For the uninitiated, it would also serve as a valuable primer helping to inform them, in a highly entertaining fashion, what life on the home front in London was really like during the period of the Phoney War and it was here that I felt that both the depth and breadth of Willetts’ research really shone through to great effect.

With its very short chapters and frequently shifting viewpoints (we see events unfold from the points of view of each of the three main protagonists in turn) this is a vibrant and pacy read. I had allotted 3 weeks to read it but became so caught up in the story that I had it licked inside 10 days: that must surely say something. Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms is an elegantly written and highly recommended account of an important episode in the wartime defence of this country.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fascinating and very entertaining wartime non-fiction account centres on three main characters, Max Knight, spy hunter; fashion designer and Nazi sympathizer Russian émigrée Anna Wolkoff; and Tyler Kent, American Embassy worker and spy. Their story is one of deceit and espionage, incorporating a whole host of interesting people, from Dennis Wheatley to Ian Fleming – who apparently based his character M on Max Knight - and the author’s research is both meticulous and clearly and methodically expressed. This is a great spy story, full of plots and intrigue, and far more interesting, in my opinion, than any fictional spy story. There’s the perennial problem in books like this of what to do about imagined scenes and conversations but on the whole Willetts manages to make his fictionalised scenes convincing. It’s a long book with perhaps a little too much detail and too many characters playing bit –parts, but on the whole I found myself gripped from beginning to end. Very enjoyable indeed.

[Eileen Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exciting account of 2 people involved in trying to overthrow the British Government and another trying to prevent them.
The 3 main protagonists are a double agent, a White Russian dress designer who happen to be a Nazi spy.
The story centres on an exchange of telegrams between Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt and the efforts of spies to get them and MI5 to stop them.
A great mustread that anyone interested in espionage especially during WW2 should have in their library.
This digital book was given to me by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.

[piet van genderen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een aardig boek met een minder pakkende titel. Het is nogal langdradig en bevat een verwarrend groot aantal namen van personen die een rol spelen in een niet onbelangrijk spionage proces in Engeland in de beginjaren van de 2de wereldoorlog.

[Émilie Weidl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impeccable research, riveting story. I learned quite a bit! Would recommend.

[Karen Lee-Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved it- in fact i read it twice. Interesting and enthralling.