Deborah Lawrenson on her mother the spy

What would you do if someone you knew your entire life — your mother — suddenly revealed that she’d been a spy? Deborah Lawrenson turned her story into a novel. 

The tangled web of espionage she weaves in The Secretary is fiction, but the background to the story is authentic, drawn in part from a seemingly innocent diary her mother wrote in 1958 while working at the British Embassy in Moscow. It’s an exciting high stakes thriller with insightful social commentary and a vivid sense of place. Exactly the sort of novel she excels at.

We spoke about Cold War Moscow, growing up as an embassy child, and the shock of discovering her mother’s cloak-and-dagger past.