Book Launch with Gordon Corera: The Spy and the Archive
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Book Launch with Gordon Corera: The Spy and the Archive

By King's Centre for the Study of Intelligence (KCSI)

Join us for an exciting evening featuring a book talk, Q&A, and drinks reception with Veteran BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera.

Date and time

Location

The Nash Lecture Theatre (King's Building K2.31), King's College London

Strand London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom

Speakers

Good to know

Highlights

  • 2 hours, 30 minutes
  • In person

About this event

Government • International Affairs

KCSI Book Launch

The King's Centre for the Study of Intelligence is delighted to host a special event to celebrate the publication of Gordon Corera's new book.

Veteran BBC security correspondent and host of The Rest is Classified podcast, Gordon Corera, will discuss his new book, 'The Spy in the Archive: How one man tried to kill the KGB'. The event will feature a 90-minute book talk and Q&A with the author moderated by Gill Bennett with a drinks reception to follow in the Dockrill Room (K6.07).


The Spy in the Archive: How one man tried to kill the KGB by Gordon Corera

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 librarian. To be so quiet, that no-one knows what you are up to as you toil undercover and deep amongst the files. The work goes on for decades but remains so low key, that even after your escape, aided by MI6, no-one even notices you are gone.

The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin – an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty files – ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy, a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.

Gordon Corera tells of the operation to extract this prized asset from Russia for the first time. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrokhin’s earlier time as a KGB idealist prepared to do what it took to serve the Soviet Union and his growing realisation that the communist state was imprisoning its own people. It is the story of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family and then of one man’s journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion, betrayal and defection. At its heart is Mitrokhin’s determination to take on the most powerful institution in the world by revealing its darkest secrets.



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Free
Oct 13 · 6:30 PM GMT+1