The Spy's Bedside Book

The foxhunter, the angler, the cricketer, the lover uaeach has had his own bedside book. Why not the spy? Spies are, after all, members of a profession much more prone to insomnia than the followers of active or outdoor sports. The hazards and rewards of a spy's life are described here, and many of the tricks of their trade. Even the most experienced spy may obtain some new hints on the preparation of secret inks or methods of eliminating or checkmating his rivals. Most of the great writers on spying and many practitioners are represented in these pages: Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Belle Boyd, Ian Fleming and John Buchan, Walter Schellenberg and Major Andre, Sir Paul Dukes and Vladimir Petrov, and from the golden age of espionage William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim. William Blake, D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Mann, all suspected of espionage in three great wars, are some of the unexpected figures. On its first appearance in 1957, Graham and Hugh Greene's THE SPY'S BEDSIDE BOOK provoked much interest and pleasure; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, 100 copies were bought by East German Intelligence. This classic anthology, beautifully repackaged as a small-format hardback, will enthral readers once again with its tales of espionage from a bygone era, while also revealing a secret or two, such as how to hide messages in a boiled egg and why you should always put pepper in your vodka when in Russia.