A: The Cold War fascinates me for so many reasons. In the first place, I came of age during the final paroxysm of the conflict between Soviet communism and the West, so it’s embedded in my own experience. Second, my grandfather grew up in St. Petersburg as the son of a British father and Russian mother and was forced to flee during the Bolshevik revolution in 1917—a family story that’s inspired my deeply personal interest in Russia itself. Finally, in my convictions and in my writing, I am always and everywhere a passionate defender of the dignity of the human individual, and the physical, psychological, and ideological battlegrounds of the Cold War provide so much material for exploring these ideas. The Cambridge Spy Ring in particular combines all these elements—human beings committing terrible acts in the service of their ideals, and the devastating consequences for their own mental health and the lives of their families. At the same time, the existing Cold War literature—both fiction and nonfiction—spins this narrative almost exclusively from the perspective of male actors in a historical drama, focusing on the how and where and when of espionage. I wanted to explore why they did it, and what it did to them, and—a territory even more shadowed—how the women in their lives coped with its effects. I felt there was a larger and more human story to be told that takes place at the intersection of the political and the personal, and from the perspective of women.

Q: There are a lot of parallels between Soviet Union spies so set in their beliefs in the novel and some of the participants in the current unrest happening in our own country. How did you get into the mindset of someone so sure that betraying their country, friends, and family is the most noble path? What do you want your readers to take away from reading this novel as they move through the current landscape?