Schemer, seductress, and sometime spy.

Baroness Moura Budberg was notorious throughout 1950s London for her reputation as a gossip and a lover to several well-known writers and artists. She was deeply charismatic, commanding centre stage wherever she went, and beloved for the air of mystery and glamour that she cultivated around herself.

But despite her charms, even her closest friends knew very little of the truth. Prone to all sorts of tall-tales and decadent lies, Moura reinvented herself tirelessly, obfuscating her past and mythologising her present. But who was the real woman, behind all of her many faces?

Using material not previously available, Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield have managed to separate fact from fiction to uncover the truth about Baroness Moura Budberg. At once a socialite of bohemian glamour, gifted in the arts of storytelling and seduction, and a courageous adventuress, a double agent for both British and Soviet intelligence, and a woman that made great personal sacrifices in the name of love.