Enemies Within: Communists, the Cambridge Spies and the Making of Modern Britain - Softcover

Richard Davenport-Hines won the Wolfson Prize for History for his first book, ‘Dudley Docker’. He is an adviser to the ‘Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’ and has also written biographies of W.H. Auden and Marcel Proust. His most recent book, ‘An English Affair’ was published in 2013. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Literature, he reviews for the Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the Times Literary Supplement.

‘Richard Davenport-Hines, in his fascinating and compendious new book ... challenges prevailing interpretations and provides answers to all the major questions about spies... As a result, this book manages to be both nostalgic and politically progressive when it seeks to remind us, passionately and eloquently, of the value of trust’ Guardian

‘Davenport-Hines writes persuasively ... Enemies Within provides a comprehensive demolition of many widely accepted myths surrounding communist subterfuge during the Cold War ... it is encouraging to come across such an erudite and unapologetically ‘elitist’ counterblast’ Spectator

‘A supremely accomplished historian ... he writes with mordant wit and a merciless eye for distortions ... the great virtues of this book lie in the detail Davenport-Hines amasses and his sense of context’ Sunday Times

‘He is strong on retelling the spy stories ... but the chief virtue of the book is the almost revisionist judgments he feels able to make based on his research ... in this rich, detailed and entertainingly irascible book’ Book of the Week, The Times

‘The product of one of our greatest modern masters of non-fiction Richard Davenport-Hines, Enemies Within is an exhaustive ... chronicle of spies in Britain ... a mosaic of such vivid detail’ Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

‘There could not be a more experienced interrogator of a subject so festooned with myths of sleaze, power and treachery ... Enemies Within is a peculiar and fascinating hybrid’ Observer

‘Richard Davenport-Hines dissects and destroys ... conventional wisdom in his masterly retelling of Britain’s most notorious intelligence disaster ... makes his case with splenetic zeal, backed by a formidable array of sources ... fascinating’ Economist

‘The history of the five Cambridge spies recounted in this book with Richard Davenport-Hines’s usual vim and brio ... a vivid panorama ... [he] bases his case on wide research and illustrates it with a wealth of piquant anecdote’ Literary Review