The Best Spy Books

Many of us live in democracies and believe in government transparency, but the truth is our leaders have considerable scope to engage in secret operations overseas. Rory Cormac talks us through five books on 'covert action,' and some of the countries that have embraced it as a policy tool.

Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond novels late in his life, before dying of a heart attack at the age of just 56. Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond series and a novella, On His Majesty's Secret Service, introduces us to the man and his life and talks us through his five favourite Bond books.

From a biography of the Soviet Union's most successful spy to an isolated German general in Tanzania in World War I, from a brilliant novel of World War II to what it was like in Moscow during Stalin's show trials, British journalist Richard Beeston (1962-2013) recommends a range of books that resonated with him as he reported from troublespots around the globe.  

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