The Illegals by Shaun Walker review – gripping true stories of spies who lived deep undercover
An eye-opening account of the old Soviet tactic of embedding secret agents where you’d least expect them
One of the best series of the golden age of TV drama, The Americans (2013-2018), centred on a pair of Russian sleeper agents operating in suburban Washington DC during the height of the cold war. By day they seemed to be a boring married American couple; by night they set honey traps, sabotaged facilities, recruited traitors and assassinated enemies.