Russian Roulette A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot Synopsis
'It reads like fiction, but it is, astonishingly, history.' - The Times In 1917, an eccentric band of British spies is smuggled into newly-Soviet Russia. Their goal? To defeat Lenin's plan to destroy British India and bring down the democracies of the West. These extraordinary spies, led by Mansfield Cumming, proved brilliantly successful. They found a wholly new way to deal with enemies, one that relied on espionage and dirty tricks rather than warfare. They were the unsung founders of today's modern, highly professional secret services. They were also the inspiration for fictional heroes to follow, from James Bond to Jason Bourne.
Giles Milton's fast-packed account of Britain's attempts to sabotage Lenin's revolution reads like a madcap thriller ... Milton has synthesised and filleted a mass of material - old memoirs, official archives and newly released intelligence files - to produce a rollicking tale ... which explains the long war against Russia with verve, wit and colour. It reads like fiction, but it is, astonishingly, history. - The Times
This gripping history of derring-do and invisible ink brings to life the exploits of the British spies who waged war against Russia during the Cold War ... Full of novelistic flourishes ... [readers] will find themselves as gripped as they would be by the very best of Fleming or le Carre. - Sunday Times Culture
Milton is a compulsive storyteller whose rattling style ensures this is the antithesis of a dry treatise on espionage. And unlike 007, it's all true. - The Daily Express
Author
About Giles Milton
Giles Milton is a writer and journalist. He has contributed articles for most of the British national newspapers as well as many foreign publications and specialises in the history of travel and exploration. In the course of his researches, he has travelled extensively in Europe and the Middle East.
