Gordon Corera

The BBC journalist and host of the hit podcast The Rest is Classified has revealed the compulsively story of 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.

‘Few are better versed in the intricacies of the continuing spy war between East and West.’ Ben Macintyre, The Times