Senior British intelligence officer George Blake worked for the Soviet Union. In 1961, he was sentenced to 42 years in prison for providing the KGB with information on all Western operations in which he participated and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. It was the longest sentence for espionage ever handed down by a British court. Drawing on personal interviews with Blake, his own research and Stasi materials, journalist and writer Simon Cooper traces his hero's journey from a humble teenage courier for the Dutch underground during World War II to a prisoner who made a sensational escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison and ended his days at a dacha near Moscow at the age of 98.