'The intelligence report on Russia and Ukraine in February 1922 with which Spies begins could have been written on the eve of Putin's invasion a hundred years later in February 2023. A major obstacle to understanding the current crisis, triumphantly overcome by Calder Walton, is Historical Attention-Span Deficit Disorder. As Spies vividly demonstrates, we are living through the latest stage of an Epic Intelligence War Between East and West which began a century ago and shows no sign of ending 'Christopher Andrew, author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5
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'Calder Walton is one of the leading intelligence historians of his generation, and his epic account - replete with human drama and tragedy - shows that Russia's struggle against the west neither began with the Cold War nor ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This volume will engross the general reader and policy makers alike, not least because it provides an unsettling window into the behaviour of the second challenger, the People's Republic of China' Brendan Simms, author of Hitler, a global biography