Their Trade is Treachery

Journalist Harry Chapman Pincher is an emblem of the Cold War who earned his colours as defence correspondent for the Daily Express. Over the course of a glittering six-decade career, he became notorious as a relentless investigator into spies and their secret trade, becoming a constant thorn in the side of the establishment and making as many enemies as friends. So influential was he that, in 1950, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan asked of him, "Can nothing be done to suppress or get rid of Chapman Pincher?". It is for his sensational 1981 book, Their Trade is Treachery, which he is perhaps best known. In this extraordinary volume he dissected the whole of the Soviet penetration of the western world during the twentieth century, helped unmask the Cambridge Five, and outlined his suspicions that former MI5 chief Peter Hollis was a Soviet super-spy at the heart of a ring of double-agents, poisoning the Secret Intelligence Service from within. The book forced Margaret Thatcher to reveal from the despatch box that Hollis had twice been subjected to official investigations. However, the Hollis revelation obscured the truly sensational nature of this book: that Chapman Pincher secured the most authentic, first-hand accounts of the workings of espionage and counter-espionage published during the Cold War. No writer had ever before penetrated so deeply and authoritatively into this world. Its impact at the time was immense and highly controversial, sending ripples throughout the British intelligence and political landscapes. As a document of those exciting and frightening times Their Trade is Treachery is incomparable