No Other Choice: An Autobiography

xii, 288pp; section of black and white photographic plates. Black cloth-covered boards; gilt titles on spine. 8vo. Rubbed spine heel. Top text block edge just edge starting to tan and fox. Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. Dust jacket has light shelf wear, chipping to edges, mirrors book damage, not price clipped.

Autobiography of the British spy, George Blake (1922-2020) who worked for MI6 but became a double agent for the Soviet Union; captured during the Korean War and imprisoned by North Korean forces, he became a communist and later secretly passed classified information to the Soviet Union.  Outed in 1961, he received a 42 year prison sentence, on the longest terms ever imposed in Britain, but he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs four years later and fled to the Soviet Union where he was welcomed as a hero; persistently defending his actions, he remained in the Soviet Union, later Russia, until his death.