The Sapphire Affair: The True Story Behind Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz

In October 1962 it looked to millions of people like the politicians of the United States and Russia were determined to push the other across the fatal line of launching a nuclear strike. The fate of the world hung on Cuba, a troubled island state in the Caribbean.

Woven through the dramatic events in and around Cuba was a quieter but perhaps equally dangerous scandal - an enormous, deeply embedded network of Soviet spies at the heart of the NATO alliance. A senior KGB defector had reveale...