Book Review / Revue de livres
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Book Review Editor: Ralph Mahar - Suggestions for Book Reviews will be gratefully received at thepillarsociety.bulletins@gmail.com
Avertissement : Les articles sont choisis pour leur pertinence et sont diffusés à titre d'information seulement. Les opinions exprimées sont celles des journalistes/auteurs respectifs. La republication n'implique pas d'approbation.
Rédacteur en chef des critiques de livres : Ralph Mahar - Les suggestions de critiques de livres sont les bienvenues à l'adresse suivante : thepillarsociety.bulletins@gmail.com |
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| Vasili Mitrokhin (Photo: Churchill Archives Centre) |
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Book Review:
The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB
by Gordon Corera
June 5, 2025
Publisher: William Collins
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The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB
by Gordon Corera
The compulsively readable new book from The Rest is Classified host Gordon Corera. About how one man – Vasili Mitrokhin – turned first disaffected dissident and then traitor to the KGB, stealing the most secret Soviet archives and smuggling them to the West.
How do you steal a library? Not just any library but the most secret, heavily guarded archive in the world. The answer is to be a librarian. To be so quiet, that no-one knows what you are up to as you toil undercover and deep amongst the files. The work goes on for decades but remains so low key, that even after your escape, aided by MI6, no-one even notices you are gone.
The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin – an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty files – ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy, a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.
Bestselling writer and historian Gordon Corera tells of the operation to extract this prized asset from Russia for the first time. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrokhin’s earlier time as a KGB idealist prepared to do what it took to serve the Soviet Union and his growing realisation that the communist state was imprisoning its own people. It is the story of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family and then of one man’s journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion, betrayal and defection. At its heart is Mitrokhin’s determination to take on the most powerful institution in the world by revealing its darkest secrets. This is narrative non-fiction at its absolute best.
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Indigo / Amazon |
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Reviews:
“Gordon Corera has delivered something quite fascinating with The Spy in the Archive – a book that manages to be simultaneously a gripping page-turner akin to the best spy novels while being a meticulously researched work of historical scholarship. ― Jennifer Bridge, Medium
“Colonel Mitrokhin did more than nearly anyone else I can think of (although Oleg Gordiyevsky was, I suspect, equally suspicious of both Yel’tsin and Putin) to warn the West of the dangers ahead.” Martin Dewhirst, Sakharov Centre |
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| Gordon Corera, author of The Spy in the Archive, on "The Rest is Classified" podcast - May 26, 2025 |
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About the book:
The Spy in the Archive; How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB
by Gordon Corera
William Collins - 298 pages 24.99 (Kindle)
Publication Date: June 5, 2025
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About the Author: Gordon Corera
Gordon Corera is a journalist and author specializing in security and intelligence issues. He is the co-host with David McCloskey of the new Goalhanger Podcast 'The Rest is Classified'. He was educated at Oxford and Harvard University and joined the BBC in 1997. In 2004, he was appointed a Security Correspondent for BBC News covering terrorism, cyber security, the work of intelligence agencies and other national security issues for BBC TV, Radio and Online. He has reported from across the United States, Asia, Africa and the Middle East and presented programmes focusing on intelligence agencies including MI6, MI5, GCHQ, the CIA, NSA and Mossad as well as issues relating to technology and security and the 2003 Iraq war.
He is the author of a number of books including Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation; Global Insecurity and the Rise and Fall of the AQ Khan Network; Intercept - The Secret History of Computers and Spies; MI6 – Life and Death in the British Secret Service; Operation Columba - The Secret Pigeon Service; Russians Among Us and The Spy in the Archive.
Biography Credit: Georgina Capel Associates
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À propos du livre :
L'espion dans les archives ; comment un homme a tenté de tuer le KGB
par Gordon Corera
William Collins - 298 pages 24,99 (Kindle)
Date de publication : 5 juin 2025 |
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