Prague in the 1950s was "a city of fear and spies and sooty fogs," Charles Laurence writes in the opening lines of The Social Agent. As the son of a British diplomat, he glimpsed Stalinist terror as his family was sucked into a web of espionage and seduction, and watched as in these strange circumstances his sister Kate went from being his soul mate to a veiled and distant girl. Written long after these troubling years, The Social Agent is at once a meticulous dissection of fact and memory and a lyrical evocation of a now vanished world. Here is a marvelous story of intrigue. Ivan R. Dee, Publisher.

The Social Agent is being kept from most bookshops because philanderers and old spies, or their widows, want to keep their secrets. The strange thing is that you can still buy this book on the internet, and many are. It is available in the US, in Europe and even in India, via Amazon and other sites. And there is irony, too: the technology that keeps The Social Agent on sale is the same that led to its being 'withdrawn' by the publisher. As the controversy develops, we've added media articles which have the details.

Read more about the controversial publication of The Social Agent.

The Sunday Times
The Daily Beast

I was in Prague in the winter of 2008, looking for spies and old secret police files, when my friend Tom took this picture with Charles Bridge and the Hrad, the Castle, in the background.

Photo:TR Lansner

I snapped the families at the Mucha chata, their cottage, in August, 1959.

(l-r): Mother; Mucha, the Social Agent; my sister Kate; Father; my brother Benedict, with Nanny; Geraldine Mucha, obscured; Jan Mucha.

Kate posed with her dolls and Mother's car, Mignon, at our house in Barrandov, Prague, 1959.

I took this one of Father and Mother at Barrandov after Christmas Day lunch in 1959.

This one is of Kate with Kish, the Koala, her favorite bear, in Surrey, England, 1960. The family had just left Prague and she was losing weight in the first phase of her illness.

Kate and myself, at the Pyramids, Cairo, 1960 as her decline began.