Viking acquires Daniela Richterova’s ‘extraordinary’ untold story of a spy

Viking has acquired Our Man in Prague by Daniela Richterova, “the story of one of MI6’s greatest, and least known, triumphs behind the Iron Curtain”.

Publishing director Daniel Crewe acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Michael Dean at Andrew Nurnberg Associates. Viking will publish in June 2027, with the paperback in 2028 to tie to the 60th anniversary of the Prague Spring.

Mary Reynics at Ballantine acquired North American rights from Robin Straus at the Robin Straus Agency, acting in conjunction with Andrew Nurnberg Associates.

The description reads: “The UK’s Secret Intelligence Service ran a spy, Miloslav Kroča, codename FREED, in Czechoslovakia in one of the longest-run cases in Cold War history.

“In 1970s Prague, Miroslav Kroča was a decorated veteran of the Czechoslovak State Security Service (StB). As an ambitious young recruit, he had been selected for advanced foreign intelligence training in Moscow and cooperation with the KGB. His fellow intelligence officers knew him as a successful officer and a loyal apparatchik, an expert in running counterintelligence operations against the British. What they did not know was that Kroča was an MI6 spy, code-named FREED.

“A double agent for almost a decade, his unmasking, upon his death in 1976, would bring the KGB’s most valuable satellite service to its knees, trigger purges and paranoia, and impact the course of the covert Cold War.”

Our Man in Prague is the “incredible untold story of Kroča and his betrayal of the StB – and the story of how British intelligence penetrated the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War”.

The synopsis continues: “With unparalleled access, Richterova shows the hidden work of the men and women who ran one of MI6’s longest-serving and most trusted double agents.

“The book, written with the support of Kroča’s daughter, combines riveting details on the spycraft of the time, cinematic scenes of revelation and global ramifications: as the Czechoslovaks were the Soviets’ most trusted satellite service, it sheds valuable new light on the KGB.”

Richterova is senior lecturer (associate professor) in Intelligence Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where she is also director of the MA in Intelligence and International Security, and co-director of the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence. She is the author of Watching the Jackals: Prague’s Covert Laisons with Cold War Terrorists and Revolutionaries (Georgetown University Press, 2025).

Our Man in Prague is her first book for a general readership. Fluent in Czech, Slovak and English, she holds the largest collection in the world of documents related to the Kroča case, including thousands of pages of declassified Czechoslovak files, and has personally interviewed key figures who were close to Kroča on both sides, including senior personnel in the Czechoslovak State Security Service and from across the British intelligence establishment.

Crewe said: “This is an extraordinary Cold War spy story, that’s extraordinarily little known. And with her unmatched sources and academic expertise, Daniela is uniquely positioned to tell it in full for the first time – which she does with real panache. What more could you want in a history book?”

Richterova added: “I have spent nearly a decade tracking this story – collecting testimonies, documents and piecing together fragments. Kroča’s story reveals what so often remains hidden: the profound impact of betrayal on security organisations and the wider covert rivalries of the Cold War. Moreover, from the outset, I was gripped by the fact that no one – his family, his MI6 handlers, or his StB colleagues – ever knew the full truth of his recruitment or the shadowy games that followed his death. I am grateful to finally bring the whole story to light.”