An unrepentant serial killer

‘‘MEN NEVER DO EVIL SO completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Pascal’s aphorism often comes to mind when reading this enjoyable and well-written biography of George Blake, who betrayed hundreds of agents to the KGB when he worked for MI6. Dick White, who ran first MI5, then MI6, thought Blake did “much more damage than Philby”. Kuper describes him as “a serial killer”.

But Blake thought of himself as a morally decent and principled man. He was brought up as a Christian, and seriously considered becoming a priest. He believed communism to be “the same as Christianity — only