Tower and Town, September 2025 (view the full edition)Shaun Walker - The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West
Why? Because they were Russian spies. Their job was to spend years integrating into the life and customs of their adopted Western country so as to learn its secrets and report back to Moscow. But, as Shaun Walker reveals in this fascinating account of 100 years of deep-cover espionage, while some 'sleepers' did achieve success, particularly in the interwar years, most did not. Either they fell foul of their own paranoia - one illegal in Britain became convinced MI5 was bugging his shirt buttons - or of the paranoia of the Kremlin, which had them shot or sent to the Gulag on their return home. A former Moscow correspondent for The Guardian, Walker has spent years delving into archives and memoirs and interviewing retired illegals to elicit a wealth of extraordinary material, much of it never before recorded. In doing so, he has lifted the lid on a very Russian sort of subterfuge. Shaun Walker will be in the Town Hall at 10am on Saturday 27 September. Ben Tarring |
For some, the trick was simply to learn to smile more (back home, mirth was in short supply). Others went to greater, more painful lengths to blend in: one man got himself circumcised to pretend he was Jewish.