Highly recommend this excellent read, Ben MacIntyre's thoroughly engaging true-to-life story of a remarkable woman, lover, mother and spy. The notes, sources and bibliography are testament to the research which shines throughout his work. Having reached the end of Sonya's story, it was interesting to read the Afterword "The Lives of Others" to discover what became of those who had shared a connection with, and loved this complex woman.

The captivating story of the secret agent who travelled the world with kids in tow, fooled MI5 and passed atomic secrets to the USSR

What an extraordinary life. I’m amazed she was so successful in her dying career. Then again the chauvinistic attitudes of the British top brass didn’t help. Brilliant story, couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended.

Ben Macintyre has pulled it off again, this time sharing with us the riveting story of 'Sonya' - German-born, British-naturalised, Ursula Kuczynski - whose long live spanned the entirety of Soviet communism and whose three-decade anti-fascist spying career involved her in truly epoch-making events. Normally, I'd not count myself a fan of biographies (- even less so autobiographies) but I gladly make exception for talented authors such as this writing about events so encompassing. This is the story of a woman who achieved more for her cause than the vast majority of fictional spies. Indeed were it not for the wealth of evidence available, one might be excused for disbelieving that such a career could even be possible. All-in-all, I found this to be a thoroughly good read. (I have to confess to developing a particular resonance with the tale when I realised that there were several touch-points with my own rather hum-drum life. For instance, I have stayed with friends in Kidlington, one of the Oxfordshire villages in which 'Sonya' rented a place to live with her family; and I know/knew some of the people and places associated with Karl Fuchs, the German-British physicist who, via 'Sonya' as his UK handler, gave to the USSR almost the entirety of the UK's and USA's early-years atomic weapons and atomic energy research outputs. I visited the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Labs. many times during the late '70s and thus will have trodden the paths and eaten in the canteen that Fuchs would have known during his time there. Professor Sir Neville Mott, who gave Fuchs his first job in the UK, was a professional acquaintance; I even attended one of his several 80th birthday parties. When I turned up for a secondment to the (civilian section of the) Los Alamos National Laboratory in the USA, which started life as the home for the Manhattan Project tasked to deliver the nuclear bomb, I was ceremoniously driven the short distance to a bridge over the Rio Grande and shown the location for a dead-letter drop used by Fuchs in order to contact his American handler: "This is why your badge has the word BRITISH written on it in large red letters" I was told. It probably didn't help that I was vehemently opposed to nuclear weapons; I still am.)

Absolutely fantastic gave a full insight into how Soviet spy’s operated. It is well written and once you start it you can’t put it down