Philipps fluent retelling of the life of Donald Maclean .... but it's thanks to the telling of the mother of Maclean’s three children, that the biography first grips and then lingers long in the mind ... a page turner.
Access All Areas, including dossiers on the atom bomb and the beginnings of the strategy of nuclear deterrence ... Philipps sets an example by being punchy and hard-nosed in his handling of facts, but pliant, imaginative and humane in his understanding of motives and emotions.
What makes a man or woman betray their country, friends and family is a subject that fascinates and appals. The quest for answers to this in the life of the Cambridge spy Donald Maclean keeps Roland Philipps’s A Spy Named Orphan fresh and thought-provoking throughout.
