An exciting plot and a swarthy, wonderfully attractive main character... exciting, heady stuff

Through the eyes of likeable rogue Lawrence Beaumont, Letemendia vividly re-creates the dark world of deceit, distrust and political intrigue which heralds the start of the English Civil War

A fiendish plot, full of intrigue and violence, and a richness and depth rare in historical fiction - I loved it

I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a brilliant read... My only complaint is that I've now got to wait for the next installment!

Conspiracy, passion and treason in the English Civil War

A lively and beautifully engineered biography

Philipps… is punchy and hard-nosed in his handling of facts, but pliant, imaginative and humane in his understanding of motives and emotions

Fresh and thought-provoking throughout... rich in archive material

A cracking story... An impressively researched and smoothly polished debut... persuasive.. [an] excellent book

A masterpiece. The rich renderings of secret assignations, smuggled documents, damning intelligence and brilliant code-breaking will delight lovers of fiction and non-fiction alike. Picture Erik Larson meets John le Carré and you have only begun to scratch the surface of this absolutely gripping book.

An adroit, deeply researched and richly embroidered portrait of Maclean

Hugely impressive – by an historian who is a master of storytelling and empathy. A rare combination.

What great storytelling. Maclean may have been a traitor but his slow slide to self-destruction has all the elements of tragedy. I couldn’t put it down.

Donald Maclean was arguably the most valuable, and certainly the most troubled, of the Cambridge spies. Roland Philipps knows the world that formed him and has given us the fullest account we've yet had not only of his treason but of the conflicted man who committed it.

Gripping from start to finish

Magisterial. The biography of Maclean we have all been waiting for

Admirable… [a] compassionate, absorbing book

[A] persuasive and polished biography

Roland Philipps illuminates, in both broad and subtle strokes

Philipps does an admirable job of piecing together the spy’s tale

Philipps’s telling of the tale is masterly. He weaves a complex web of professional, psychological and marital themes into a wonderful fluent, coherent and compelling narrative

Elegant, thorough and surprisingly exciting

[A] superbly told tale

In A Spy Named Orphan Roland Philipps’s description of Donald Maclean’s psychological make-up chimes with what I have always felt about the Cambridge spies (Philby excepted) – namely, that their romance with the Soviet Union partook of patriotism as much as it did of espionage… Philipps makes the story and the slow uncovering of his treachery a gripping narrative and an overwhelmingly sad one