Oleg Gordievsky
Under Siege
Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War
By Rodric Braithwaite
Profile Books 446pp £20 order from our bookshop
Sir Rodric Braithwaite had already served as a diplomat in Moscow before becoming the British Ambassador there at the end of the 1980s. In the Foreign and Commonwealth Office there is a well-known expression – ‘to go native’ – used in connection with those of its own employees (as well as journalists and intelligence officers) who have so fallen in love with the country where they are stationed that they then find it very difficult to distinguish between the interests of that country and the interests of their own.
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