This is an online streaming event

After the live broadcast, the recording will be available until midnight on March 31 for ticket holders. For information on how to use KPlayer please refer to our guide or see the KPlayer FAQ.

The death in the final days of 2020 of George Blake, aged 98 in Moscow, lifted the embargo on Simon Kuper revealing for the first time the results of his unparalleled access and years of research on the most notorious double agent in British history. 65 years after he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs and his 42-year sentence for betraying Western operations to the KGB, the extraordinary story of the last remaining Cold War spy is told in The Happy Traitor. The Financial Times columnist will be in conversation with fellow author and historian Helen Fry.

Click here to buy The Happy Traitor by Simon Kuper from Blackwell’s.

Simon Kuper joined the Financial Times in 1994. He wrote the daily currencies column, before leaving the FT in 1998, to return in 2002 as sports columnist. He has been there ever since, nowadays writing a general column for the Weekend FT on all manner of topics from politics to books, and on cities including London, Paris, Johannesburg and Miami.

Helen Fry is a specialist in the history of British Intelligence. She is the author of The Walls Have Ears, The London Cage, and over twenty books focusing on intelligence and POWs in World War II. She lives in London.