Five of the best spy novels

Alan Judd is a novelist and biographer who has previously served in the British army and the Foreign Office. Chosen as one of the original twenty Best Young British Novelists, he subsequently won the Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Award, the Heinemann Award and the Guardian Fiction Award; he was also shortlisted for the Westminster Prize. His latest novel is Inside Enemy.

Two of Judd's five favorite spy novels, as shared at the Telegraph:

It was le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) ... that became the quintessential Cold War spy novel, arguably his most important if not quite his best. That honour, for me, goes to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), with its echoes of Philby and the Cambridge spies.

Read about the other novels on Judd's list.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is among Rory MacLean's top ten Berliners in literature, Louise Doughty's ten best courtroom dramas, Jon Stock's top ten John le Carré novels, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on The Cold War, Charles Cumming's best books, and Keith Jeffery's five best books about Britain's Secret Service.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is on John Mullan's list of ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature and among Jon Stock's top ten John le Carré novels, Jeffrey Archer's top ten romans-fleuves, Robert Baer's five best books on being a spy and Stella Rimington's six favorite secret agent novels; Peter Millar includes it among John le Carré's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue