The Spy Across the Water

For many years a political correspondent on The Scotsman and then The Guardian, Jim Naughtie became a household name first as presenter of Radio 4’s The World at One and then of The Today Programme. He is now a special correspondent for BBC News and presents Radio 4’s Bookclub, and has also chaired the Man Booker and Samuel Johnson judging panels.

Jim has written widely within non-fiction and politics, including The Rivals (Fourth Estate, 2001), an intimate portrait of the political marriage between Blair and Brown (which became the TV feature The Deal) and The Accidental American (Pan Macmillan, 2004) on the relationship between Blair and the USA. The Making of Music (John Murray, 2007) grew out of his radio series of the same name, and The New Elizabethans (HarperCollins, 2012) portrays sixty portraits of people who shaped, or embodied, the spirit of Britain during the Queen’s reign.

His political travel memoir, On the Road: Adventures from Nixon to Trump (Simon & Schuster, 2020), charts fifty years of crisscrossing America reporting for Today; ‘Naughtie’s love of America is woven through every page’ (The Sunday Times).

He has also written a trilogy of political thrillers, published by Head of Zeus: The Madness of July (2014), Paris Spring (2016), and The Spy Across The Water (2023). They have been praised as ‘hugely gripping and atmospheric’ by the Mail on Sunday and ‘as convincing as any of John le Carré’s’ by the Independent.