The Soviet spy who couldn't love

In 1981, a Soviet spy walked into MI6HQ in Tehran and offered to defect to Britain, if, in return, Britain could help him improve his performance in bed. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Ben McIntyre introduces Spencer Mizen to an extraordinary agent with a sexual secret. A secret that changed the course of Iranian history and may, just may, have averted nuclear war. Hi Ben, it's a pleasure to have you on the History Extra podcast today. Your new book is called Redwood, The Untold Story of the Cold War's most extraordinary spy, and

This man truly was an extraordinary spy because in the early 1980s he defected from the KGB to the West and in the process might just have saved the world from nuclear war. Now we'll kind of dig into that in a bit more detail a bit later, but first I wonder if you could introduce us to the spying question. His name was Vladimir Kuzychkin and he was a fascinating, complex character, wasn't he? And he was very much a product of what I guess was a pretty troubled upbringing.

So I wonder if you could tell us about that upbringing and give us an insight into how it shaped Kuzichkin's later life. Of course, and it's a great pleasure to be on the program. Thank you. So Spencer, I mean, Kositchkin is an extraordinary spy. I mean, he's quite unlike any spy I've ever written about before because his motivations are completely different.

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