Spying has changed. In this era of email intercepts and drone strikes, spooks are expected to uncover plots buried in mountains of data. Yet this makes the need for trained field operatives who can verify facts and uncover secrets more acute than ever. The human factor endures.

In The New Spymasters, the first real account of how modern espionage works, we follow riveting stories of dramatic missions and the larger-than-life characters who undertook them. These were moments when success - and ultimately life or death - depended on whether the right person was in the right place... at exactly the right time.