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The Happy Traitor

Spies, Lies and Exile in Russia: The Extraordinary Story of George Blake

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About this listen

George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a Senior Officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least known double agents, and remained unrepentant.

In 1961, Blake was sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court.

On the surface, Blake was a charming, intelligent and engaging man and most importantly, a seemingly committed patriot. Underneath, a ruthlessly efficient mole and key player in the infamous 'Berlin Tunnel' operation. This illuminating biography tracks Blake from humble beginnings as a teenage courier for the Dutch underground during the Second World War, to the sensational prison-break from Wormwood Scrubs that inspired Hitchcock to write screenplay.

Through a combination of personal interviews, research and unique access to Stasi records, journalist Simon Kuper unravels who Blake truly was, what he was capable of, and why he did it.

©2021 Simon Kuper (P)2021 Bolinda Publishing Espionage True Crime Cold War

Critic reviews

"Kuper provides a different and valuable perspective, humane and informative." (John Le Carré, author of Agent Running in the Field)

"A deeply human read, wonderfully written, on the foibles of a fascinating, flawed, treacherous and sort of likeable character." (Philippe Sands)

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Most relevant
I don't often review audio versions of books but due to time spent travelling I'm now listening to books more often. Usually I can enjoy the book and the narrator fades into the background, which is the ideal, or else they stand out as being excellent because of their range, bringing a story completely to life, which is even better. Occasionally a narrator stands out for the wrong reason and this is the case here.

It wouldn't have taken much to find out how to pronounce Dutch and German place names, or the very occasional word, Instead the pronunciations threw me out so much - I had to go back to the Kindle when I got home to actually check that 'Staatssicherheitsdienst' was actually in there and not something that sounded nothing like it. It's challenging, fair enough, but you only have to hear someone say it three or four times and practice a bit. And 'Sinterklaas' isn't 'sinkter class', Sorry to sound pedantic, but it's things like this that make all the difference to the enjoyment of listening.

Pronunication...

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An extraordinarily fascinating story. Never boring.
Sadly it was written from a non-Communist western perspective and it would have been better had this not been evident.
The narration had a fair amount of horrendous mispronunciations.
All in all, a gripping book and story.

Fascinating

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