Spy fiction, a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device, emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies. It was given new impetus by the development of fascism and communism in the lead-up to World War II, continued to develop during the Cold War, and received a fresh impetus from the emergence of rogue states, international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, maritime piracy and technological sabotage and espionage as potent threats to Western societies. As a genre, spy fiction is thematically related to the novel of adventure, the thriller and the politico-military thriller.
1740 (MDCCXL) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, the 1740th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 740th year of the 2nd millennium, the 40th year of the 18th century, and the 1st year of the 1740s decade. As of the start of 1740, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Emmanuelle Seigner is a French actress, former fashion model, and singer. She is known for her roles in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), The Ninth Gate (1999) and Frantic (1988). She has been nominated for a César Award for Best Actress for Venus in Fur (2013), and for two César Awards for Best Supporting Actress in Place Vendôme (1998) and La Vie En Rose (2007). She has been married to Polish film director Roman Polanski since 30 August 1989.
Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I. Professor Shipman, a noted scholar, stated "he believed she was innocent" and condemned only because the French Army needed a scapegoat. She was executed by firing squad in France.
Leonard Cyril Deighton is a British author. His publications have included cookery books, history and military history, but he is best known for his spy novels.
Jennifer Jane Saunders is an English actress, comedian, and screenwriter. Saunders originally found attention in the 1980s, when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with her best friend and comedy partner, Dawn French. With French, she co-wrote and starred in their eponymous sketch show, French and Saunders, for which they jointly received a BAFTA Fellowship in 2009. Saunders later received acclaim in the 1990s for writing and playing her character Edina Monsoon in her sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a 1963 Cold War spy novel by the British author John le Carré. It depicts Alec Leamas, a British agent, being sent to East Germany as a faux defector to sow disinformation about a powerful East German intelligence officer. It serves as a sequel to le Carré's previous novels Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, which also featured the fictitious British intelligence organization, "The Circus", and its agents George Smiley and Peter Guillam.
David John Moore Cornwell, better known by his pen name John le Carré, was a British-Irish author, best known for his espionage novels. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works. According to his son Nicholas, le Carré took Irish citizenship shortly before his death.
Passenger to Frankfurt: An Extravaganza is a spy novel by Agatha Christie first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in September 1970 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at twenty-five shillings. In preparation for decimalisation on 15 February 1971, it was concurrently priced on the dustjacket at £1.25. The US edition retailed at $5.95.
Rachel Ames, née Stainer was a British novelist and journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Sarah Gainham. She is perhaps best known for her 1967 novel Night Falls on the City, the first of a trilogy about life in Vienna under Nazi rule.
Alice Friedmann, known as Litzi Friedmann, was an Austrian Communist who was the first wife of Kim Philby, a member of the Cambridge Five. Records identify her as the Soviet agent with the code name Mary.
Edith Tudor-Hart was an Austrian-British photographer and spy for the Soviet Union. Brought up in a family of socialists, she trained in photography at Walter Gropius's Bauhaus in Dessau, and carried her political ideals through her art. Through her connections with Arnold Deutsch, Tudor-Hart was instrumental in the recruiting of the Cambridge Spy ring which damaged British intelligence from World War II until the security services discovered all their identities by the mid-1960s. She recommended Litzi Friedmann and Kim Philby for recruitment by the KGB and acted as an intermediary for Anthony Blunt and Bob Stewart when the rezidentura at the Soviet Embassy in London suspended its operations in February 1940.
Ruth von Mayenburg was an Austrian journalist, writer and translator. In her earlier years, she was politically active in the Communist Party of Austria. Fleeing the Nazis, she lived in exile in the Soviet Union at Moscow's Hotel Lux, afterwards writing several books about her experiences there.
Time Right Deadly is a 1956 thriller novel by the British writer Sarah Gainham. Her debut novel, it was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger Award, losing out to Edward Grierson's The Second Man. Like many of her novels it takes place in post-war Austria, where she lived.
The Stone Roses is a 1959 spy thriller novel by the British writer Sarah Gainham. It is set in Prague shortly after the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.
The Cold Dark Night is a 1957 spy thriller novel by the British writer Sarah Gainham. Her second novel, it is set at the height of the Cold War when the 1954 Berlin Conference saw the Big Four foreign ministers arrive in the divided city. Gainham had worked in Berlin as a journalist at the time of the Conference.
The Mythmaker is a 1957 spy thriller novel by the British writer Sarah Gainham, her third published novel. At with many of her works it takes place in Vienna, where she settled in the post-war era. It was released in the United States in 1958 under the alternative title Appointment in Vienna.
A Place in the Country is a 1969 novel by the British writer Sarah Gainham. It was the second in her Vienna trilogy following on from the popular first novel Night Falls on the City.
Private Worlds is a 1971 novel by the British writer Sarah Gainham. It was the third in her Vienna trilogy following on from the popular first novel Night Falls on the City.
The Silent Hostage is a 1960 spy thriller novel by the British writer Sarah Gainham. Before writing her most celebrated work Night Falls on the City, Gainham produced several thrillers set in Continental Europe where she had lived since 1947. The novel takes place on the Adriatic Coast of Yugoslavia not long after the Second World War.
