The Best Spy Books

Spying is ultimately very dull and you run into the same kind of mediocrity that you encounter anywhere else in life, says former CIA operative Robert Baer. Nor do governments always listen.  He recommends books on espionage—both fiction and nonfiction—that give a sense of what it's all about.

Journalist and author Edward Lucas gives an excoriating critique of Putinism and explains how Russia's amoral present is rooted in a failure to come to terms with its past.

The job of the intelligence services is to understand others and help leaders act more wisely, says the author of a new history of the FBI. There’s a balance to be struck between liberty and security but when the CIA and FBI do not harmonise their intelligence missions, people die.

There's an unseen, mostly unacknowledged cyber war going on. British journalist Misha Glenny, author of Dark Market, tells us who's involved, how far it spreads and what could happen if we let it continue unchecked. He picks the best books to get a better handle on cybersecurity.

The British author Ian Fleming (1908-1964) wrote only 12 James Bond novels, but dozens more have been published since his death. Mark Edlitz, author of James Bond After Fleming, guides us through the 'continuation novels,' starting with Kingsley Amis in 1968.

Leading British spy writer Charles Cumming found his vocation at 25 after he was approached by MI6. He says that experience, brief but interesting, was crying out to be dramatised

Global security consultant says sending armed forces into another country based on purely moral, gut feelings of good and evil is a dangerous policy-making premise. He chooses books on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Al Qaeda

Not all important subjects make good reading, but cyber security is an exception: not only do we all need to know about and take responsibility for it, but it also generates nonfiction books worthy of John le Carré. Cyber security and policy expert Josephine Wolff, author of You'll see this message when it is too late, recommends the best cyber security books.

The senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, chooses books on the real pioneers of British and American espionage – flawed men who saved lives and made a difference.