Paperback
A librarian’s quiet rage exposed the KGB’s darkest secrets to the West.

The Spy in the Archive

How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB

$26.84

  • Paperback

    336 pages

  • Release Date

    29 September 2026

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Summary

LONGLISTED for the CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2026

The compulsively readable new book from host of The Rest is Classified, Gordon Corera. About how one man – Vasili Mitrokhin – turned first disaffected dissident and then traitor to the KGB, stealing the most secret Soviet archives and smuggling them to the West.

How do you steal a library? Not just any library but the most secret, heavily guarded archive in the world. The answer is to be a l…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780008644833
ISBN-10:0008644837
Author:Gordon Corera
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
Imprint:William Collins
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:336
Release Date:29 September 2026
Weight:240g
Dimensions:26mm x 129mm x 198mm
A-Format
B-Format
The Spy in the Archive by Gordon Corera - ISBN: 9780008644833
129 × 198 mm
C-Format
A4
mm / in
What They're Saying

Critics Review

REVIEWS FOR THE SPY IN THE ARCHIVE:
‘The overdue and often striking memorial to Vasili Mitrokhin’ Sunday Times
‘An intriguing new biography’ Daily Telegraph
‘Corera’s fluent narrative draws on many sources … a dramatic story well told’ Spectator
‘Enthralling … it is a study of why Mitrokhin began this unprecedented plunder of top-secret material and how he got away with it. Although Corera never met Mitrokhin or his family, his intuition and the secondary sources give us a convincing picture’ Literary Review
‘Provides important context to Mitrokhin’s story and contains many fascinating details. Corera’s book, though acknowledging that some details of the story will never be known, makes an important contribution not just to understanding Mitrokhin, but to understanding 21st-century Russia, too’ Engelsberg Ideas
REVIEWS FOR RUSSIANS AMONG US:
‘This [is a] superb study of the illegals system … In the West it was erroneously assumed that the illegals programme ended with the Cold War, but as Corera proves it was ramped up and modernised by Putin for the 21st century … Alexander Poteyev was a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who rose to become deputy head of Directorate S. His story, told here for the first time, is an extraordinary one… Corera tells this astonishing tale with deft authority, placing it in the wider context of Russian intelligence strategy. Few are better versed in the intricacies of the continuing spy war between East and West’ Ben Macintyre, The Times
‘Extremely readable … A lively and disturbing account of the extraordinary events that led to, and the terrible ones that followed, the Vienna spy swap in 2010, an episode perhaps best remembered in the West for Anna Chapman, the strikingly beautiful socialite who turned out to be a Russian spy’ Daily Telegraph

About The Author

Gordon Corera

Gordon Corera is a journalist and writer on intelligence and security issues. Since 2004, he has been a Security Correspondent for BBC News, covering terrorism, cyber security, the work of intelligence agencies, and other national security issues for BBC TV, Radio, and Online. He has reported from across the United States, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Corera has also presented a number of programmes focusing on intelligence agencies, including MI6, MI5, GCHQ, the CIA, NSA, and Mossad.

He is the author of:

  • Intercept – The Secret History of Computers and Spies
  • MI6 – Life and Death in the British Secret Service
  • Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity and the Rise and Fall of the AQ Khan Network

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