100 Books Like Anthony Blunt

I doubt there has ever been a more controversial book written about an espionage case than Perjury! For decades, Professor Weinstein’s 1978 book on the Alger Hiss case generated heated arguments between Hiss’s supporters and detractors. I was a participant in that battle and I tell you, it was brutal. Both sides took no prisoners when arguing over the legitimacy of the author’s interpretation of evidence and conclusions. For over 25 years, Hiss cheered his supporters on and went to his grave, still proclaiming his innocence. 

The historian’s task is to separate historical fact from fantasy. I recommend Weinstein’s expanded second edition version because in its pages, he does just that, plus he integrated the provocative evidence from Russian archives that emerged after the first edition was published. 

Bottom line, this book provides the most objective and convincing account of the drama that led to Hiss’s conviction.  

This book is the most comprehensive account of KGB spying in America and two of its authors have studied the subject exhaustively for decades and the third author is a Soviet ex KGB agent with firsthand knowledge of and access to Soviet KGB files.

This is the bible and go-to book for any studied interest in the subject.

I like this book for its thoroughly researched narrative and unbiased conclusion. The authors did what historians worth their salt are required to do: follow the evidence. I consider this book my number one choice out of the dozens upon dozens written about the case over the past six-plus decades. Though dense (it’s over 600 pages long) I found it a real page-turner!

I delved into the details of the Rosenberg espionage prosecution when I was asked to join in a lawsuit against the federal government that sought to unseal the Rosenberg grand jury records. We won and the unsealed grand jury records put to rest a belief held by Rosenberg supporters that Julius and Ethel were mere innocents framed by the government.

The records also conclusively established the reality of the misjustice that was carried out by the government in executing Ethel. Ahh, if only every research endeavor would… show more.

British spy rings of the 1930s and 40s fascinate me. Their members appear more colorful and audacious than their American counterparts. I think it rings especially true for the chaps of the “Cambridge Spy Ring.” Their escapades are recounted in dozens of books but I consider Newton’s the best, partly because he does what no other historian had done: chronicle the missing American dimension of the Cambridge Spy Ring saga. 

Newton is a fine historian as well as a grand storyteller, and I love a book that reads like a mystery novel! I also have great respect for writers who possess the knack for projecting a sense of “place” in their books. Newton does this so well that, when I lived in Washington DC, and after completing my evening read of his book, I’d venture out onto gaslit cobblestone streets and wander by the l brick-faced Georgian style residences ever… show more.

A landmark espionage book about the Cambridge Spies, which has stood up surprisingly well though published almost forty years ago and before the release of Russian and British archives, and first  made me  interested in ‘The Climate of Treason’.  It not only gives the historical background to their recruitment during the 1930s but, drawing on a deathbed confession from Goronwy Rees, named two new spies ‘Maurice’ and ‘Basil’. After leaks to the satirical magazine Private Eye , Margaret Thatcher confirmed that ‘Maurice’ was the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures  Sir Anthony Blunt who had been granted immunity sixteen years earlier. ‘Basil’ was identified as an atomic scientist, serving in the Washington Embassy alongside Kim Philby and Guy Burgess, called Wilfrid Mann. Mann fended off the accusations at the time and the story died but subsequent research for my book has proved Mann was a spy.

John Banville is a famously prolific author, but his 1997 novel, The Untouchable, is unique in that it’s based on a real-life figure.

Anthony Blunt—who would later be exposed as one of the notorious Cambridge spies—rose to become an art expert to the Queen, even as he funneled purloined secrets to the highest reaches of the Kremlin. 

In The Untouchable, we follow Blunt’s fictional counterpart, Victor Maskell, from his poor Irish upbringing and conversion to Marxism at Cambridge, to his efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union well into the Cold War.

Victor’s first-person account—a miracle of authorly ventriloquism for a character bordering on the sociopathic—is rendered in Banville’s silky prose, a pure delight to read. For me, The Untouchable is a novel for the ages.

Still Life is a glorious book set in London and Florence, giving a fascinating insight into the worlds of History of Art and globe making. Reading it is like eating wonderful food, you will want to savour every mouthful. The characters are extraordinary and yet believable – I fell in love with every one of them.

Ian Pears is an erudite art historian who has written prolifically on artistic, historical, and financial topics.

In his series about the fictional Italian Art Squad in Rome, he gives us General Tadeo Bottando who is fighting a losing battle to protect the heritage and art of Italy. He is a military man who expects his subordinates to respect his position and wisdom, but Flavia de Stefano, his second-in-command, is distressingly off-hand in her treatment of the man.

In Death and Restoration, the General has just received a tip about a planned raid of a nearby monastery. It doesn’t make sense, there’s nothing valuable in the monastery’s collection, except for the endearing art thief, called the “Rotweiler of Restoration,” who is restoring the only important piece, a painting by Caravaggio and a tiny dusty icon of a Madonna. She’s called “My Lady” is believed to have protected the church… show more.

Siri Hustvedt is one of my favorite writers. Her characters are so complex and believable, I always feel I know them personally after I finish a book by her. What I Loved is not strictly a mystery, even though there is violence, murder, and erotic tension. It is an urban thriller, a love story, and a deep dive into an artist’s soul over his 30-year career. 

I always find books about artists intriguing, and this one adds a bit of forgery, too. In 1631 Amsterdam, Sara de Vos is widowed, inheriting her husband’s debt. She paints to eke out a living, though that is not easy for a woman of that time and place. In 1957, a young art student agrees to forge one of de Vos’s works, only to be haunted by her crime in Sydney in 2000, when she becomes a famous art historian and curator.

I loved this book when I read it and went back to it again when I later decided to write The Map Colorist, my own novel set in seventeenth-century Amsterdam.