Redwood

From the multi-million copy bestselling historian, the remarkable, unknown Cold War story of how one spy saved the world from nuclear war

The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon.

‘Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for Vladmir Kuzichkin, the unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets. For Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret, one that if revealed, would turn his life upside-down. In a desperate situation, he reached out to MI6, believing it to have the only solution. And then, facing exposure, he demanded that the British try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan.

This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications.

Drawing on never-before-seen material from archives in multiple countries, and interviews with the participants including officers from MI6 and MI5, the KGB and CIA, Redwood lifts the lid on an unknown and highly significant Cold War victory, on the machinations of history's Great Game, and on how espionage really works.

Without Redwood, our world would be very different – and might not exist at all.