PositiveThe Financial TimesThe result isn’t new information — Blake’s description of his life was consistent with previous accounts, which Kuper often quotes — but it is an enjoyable and lively retelling of a story now largely forgotten ... Kuper will be familiar to FT readers as an entertaining and thoughtful writer, and his approach is to try to understand his subject while resisting his charm. Instead of a formula spy yarn, we get a personal encounter with Blake, as Kuper wrestles with his motivations and justifications, asking whether someone who barely knew Britain can really be called a traitor ... Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it may be hard to recall why people like this once mattered so much. But their betrayals were real: as Kuper has to remind himself in the wake of a friendly encounter, at least 40 agents behind the Iron Curtain were killed as a result of information Blake passed to his handlers. In the end, listening to his refusal to acknowledge his part in that, we’re left with the impression that the final person Blake deceived was himself.
