Books like The Sword and the Shield — picked by fans

My line of work has only enhanced my fascination with spies and spying. Espionage was on the periphery of my world and I was privy, on occasion, to snippets of information that shed light on certain events. Reading this book was like being privy to a host of secrets, many during my own era. How fascinating to be taken through the history of espionage from biblical times until today. The author reveals missing pieces to many significant moments in history, where monumental decisions were made based on information bought and sold, died for, killed for, stolen, or extracted by torture or coercion. Equally fascinating is how so much of that information was misinterpreted, denied, ignored, inflated, or simply misplaced. Great battles were won and lost, kingdoms toppled, fortunes spent and made, often based on a single snippet of information.

Anybody, who wants to study intelligence history and specifically the work of Russian Intelligence Services (RIS), must start with this book which covers several important cases in the 1930s. Remarkably, the author is not an intelligence historian and never worked in the archives. David Dallin’s writings that proved to be correct and accurate in most of the cases, were entirely based on his own analysis, newspaper publications and occasional interviews with Soviet defectors.

Unlike the official history of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6, by Keith Jeffery, this book is written without the censorship of the Service presenting the facts as the author, a journalist and academic, considers fit and proper to show. Very well written and covering a considerable period of time with many secret operations, it is a very good book which The Guardian described as ‘A remarkable achievement and an encyclopaedic post-war history which any student of the secret world should read.’

In 2015 Forsyth published his autobiography entitled The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue. This is another excellent book written in his usual style - full of intrigue and adventures, only this time the author himself is the main protagonist. Besides, all that Forsyth describes in this book is either true or at least very close to the truth including his admitting that for a certain period of time and in certain countries he had been acting as an agent of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That doesn’t mean, of course, that Forsyth had ever been a spy, but he is certainly writing his spy novels as an insider.

All his books are extremely well written and must be studied by all intelligence professionals as textbooks. Usually, intelligence officers do not like reading because they think their life is so interesting and full of adventures that nothing can be more fascinating.… show more.

A deeply revealing insight into the mysterious world of the Soviet secret service written as a collaboration between a top Cambridge historian and a senior KGB officer who was a double agent working for the British MI6. It tells us not only what the KGB got up to but, equally important, how the senior KGB leaders thought. It opens up the paranoia at the top of the Soviet system.

I chose this book as it explores the difficult, murky world of the double agent, that of Colonel Oleg Gordievsky of the KGB. I could have chosen any one of half a dozen of Ben’s books for great nonfiction writing. However, this story is set in a wonderful period for the espionage lover: the Cold War of the 1980s. A rollicking yarn that I think is one the best escape from Russia stories there is. I have to say this book constantly amazed me.

Indeed, I owe a debt to Ben, as his writing inspired me to write my own nonfiction espionage books, of which I have written four to date.

Based on an unprecedented treasure trove of documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union by former intelligence officer Vasily Mitrokhin, this book demonstrated the KGB operations used in an attempt to destabilise the West during the Cold War - disinformation, forgery of documents, honey trapping, smears, surveillance and recruiting agents of influence and politicians in the UK, NATO countries and the USA.

I am recommending The Mitrokhin Archive because it is based on primary documents. So many books about espionage are based on memories and speculation, while the Mitrokhin Archive's value is that its assertions and revelations are based on actual KGB documents. 

And so this book was indispensable for my research for my book.

This Martha is the real deal! Her autobiographical account begins in Laos during the Vietnam War when her husband, a CIA officer, is killed. Back in the USA, she puts heartache to one side and joins the CIA herself. Her first posting was in Moscow in 1975.

I was riveted by the raw details of her lonely arrival: the grim airport and grimy hotel room, her awareness of being watched. She plays an integral part in the running of Soviet agent Aleksandr Ogorodnik in Moscow, under cover of being an ‘unimportant’ embassy woman and using old-style tradecraft for hours to make sure she is not being followed. Eventually, she is arrested by the KGB and detained in the infamous Lubyanka Prison.

It’s utterly gripping, not least for Martha Peterson’s amazing courage. 

This book is a treasury of significant but unknown historical information. Even if you are well-read on the Cold War, the global perspective which the book gives will change what you think you know.

Structuring his argument chronologically and thematically, O. Westad makes the most comprehensive case for the Cold War’s impact on the Global South. I learned more about the modern history of Africa and East Asia and their subsequent decolonization and state-building than in any other book.

I also appreciated how the author does not take an ideological stance for the USA or the USSR but allows the readers to explore the political argumentation that arose in decisive historical moments.

Roosevelt's Lost Alliances is perhaps the book that has had the most tangible influence on my own work. Seeing how Frank Costigliola highlighted and analysed the political consequences of personal preferences and relations was eye-opening.

When the book appeared, some reviewers claimed that Costigliola made leaders' personalities all-important and overlooked structural factors. Because I had read that criticism before I read the book, I was surprised to find a nuanced account of how personal and political factors intersected. I found those reviews blatantly unfair.

By carefully analysing their personal preferences and relations, Costigliola did not claim that a few powerful men determined history. Rather, he showed how emotional and cultural factors, which are surely structural, influenced them and their decision-making.