The Last Secret

On a cold February day in 1944, a British intelligence officer knelt in a Northamptonshire field, staring into a crate of onions. Hidden inside: Nazi explosives, bound for British ships, planes and factories. He began to dismantle the bomb, dictating every move into a field telephone. One slip, and he would be blown to pieces. His name was Victor Rothschild, and he was one of the richest men in England.

Darkly handsome, dazzlingly clever and unflinchingly brave, Rothschild was a rising star of British intelligence. He was also a Cambridge scientist, a first-class cricketer and heir to the legendary banking dynasty. He could have been anything he wanted. He chose to run MI5’s counter-sabotage unit, disarming bombs and hunting Nazi agents.

Yet the greatest danger he faced, and his greatest sacrifice, was personal. His friends from Cambridge, Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, had shared his flat, his table and his trust. He helped them into positions of national importance, at the heart of British intelligence. Both were Soviet spies, traitors to Britain.

The Last Secret is a true story of loyalty and betrayal, courage and misjudgment. Drawing on newly released MI5 files and unheard testimony, it reveals for the first time the extraordinary scope of this decades-long cat-and-mouse game – Rothschild’s obsessive struggle to clear his own name and bring his former friends to justice.