The Spy’s Bedside Book

‘I fear England will be infested with alien agents who have learned their trade from this revealing and mischievous compilation.’

1. London Evening News

As Stella Rimington, the first female head of MI5, reminds us in her introduction, nowhere is it harder to distinguish truth from fiction than in espionage. After all, what could be more ludicrous than Sir Robert Baden-Powell capering around the Balkans with a butterfly net, secreting the plans of fortifications in his sketchbook? Yet it happened, along with a host of other real-life exploits of agents, from Major André in the American Revolution, to Mata Hari in the First World War and Walter Schellenberg in the Second. We learn the hazards of spies’ lives and the tricks of their trade: how to hide messages in a hard-boiled egg and why it is wise to add pepper to your vodka when in Russia.

Aside from the incredible true stories, no book of espionage would be complete without such glamorous fictional heroes as Duckworth Drew, Richard Hannay and James Bond. Their impeccable suits, armoured attaché cases and suave countenances, are burned into popular imagination. Drew, trussed and bound in a sealed room with only an exploding oil lamp for company, still finds a way to escape, while Bond unscrews a tube of shaving cream to ‘reveal the silencer for the Beretta’.

Such has been the enduring popularity of this edition that this is our sixth printing, and the incredible tales of daredevil antics, bravado, dexterity and cunning can be enjoyed again by all armchair spies. The Guardian, The Times, Oxford University Press and Penguin are just a few of the titles and publishers for whom the talented Nick Hardcastle has illustrated for, as well as working with Folio on previous editions. His realistic style is highly detailed and his illustrations evoke the dark and daring clandestine world of espionage brilliantly. When it came to commissioning the introduction, we immediately thought of the former Director General of MI5, Stella Rimington, who has the ideal credentials to talk about the extracts and exploits included in this compendium.