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Agent Sonya : Moscow's most daring wartime spy  Cover Image Book Book

Agent Sonya : Moscow's most daring wartime spy / Ben Macintyre.

Summary:

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor tells the thrilling true story of the most important female spy in history: an agent code-named "Sonya," who set the stage for the Cold War. In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her. They didn't know that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer. They didn't know that her husband was also a spy, or that she was running powerful agents across Europe. Behind the facade of her picturesque life, Burton was a dedicated Communist, a Soviet colonel, and a veteran agent, gathering the scientific secrets that would enable the Soviet Union to build the bomb. This true-life spy story is a masterpiece about the woman code-named "Sonya." Over the course of her career, she was hunted by the Chinese, the Japanese, the Nazis, MI5, MI6, and the FBI-and she evaded them all. Her story reflects the great ideological clash of the twentieth century-between Communism, Fascism, and Western democracy-and casts new light on the spy battles and shifting allegiances of our own times. With unparalleled access to Sonya's diaries and correspondence and never-before-seen information on her clandestine activities, Ben Macintyre has conjured a page-turning history of a legendary secret agent, a woman who influenced the course of the Cold War and helped plunge the world into a decades-long standoff between nuclear superpowers."-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9780771001949 (hardcover)
  • Physical Description: xviii, 377 pages : illustrations (some colour) ; 25 cm
  • Edition: First edition.
  • Publisher: Toronto : Signal, 2020.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:
Whirl -- Whore of the Orient -- Agent Ramsay -- When Sonya is dancing -- The spies who loved her -- Sparrow -- Aboard the Conte Verde -- Our woman in Manchuria -- Vagabond life -- From Peking to Poland -- In for a penny -- The molehill -- A marriage of convenience -- The baby-snatcher -- The happy time -- Barbarossa -- The road to hell -- Atomic spies -- Milicent of MI5 -- Operation Hammer -- Rustle of spring -- Great Rollright -- A very tough nut -- Ruth Werner.
Subject: Werner, Ruth, 1907-2000.
Soviet Union. Glavnoe razvedyvatelʹnoe upravlenie.
Cold War.
Espionage, Soviet > Great Britain > History > 20th century.
Nuclear weapons > History > 20th century.
Spies > Germany (East) > Biography.
Spies > Great Britain > Biography.
Spies > Soviet Union > Biography.
Women spies > Soviet Union > Biography.
Genre: Biographies.

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show All Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Stroud Branch 327.12470092 Werne-M 31681010209898 NONFIC Available -


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