The Last Great Cold War Espionage Story

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“A Spy in the Family” is the first book to reveal the full, astonishing story of “Václav Jelínek”, aka Erwin van Haarlem, using previously unseen documents from the UK, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.

Johanna van Haarlem looks across the Old Bailey courtroom to the hawk-featured man in the dock. There is no expression on his face. No remorse. And certainly no love. For over ten years, she had believed he was Erwin van Haarlem, the son she gave up for adoption as a baby in the chaos of Europe in World War Two. She’d embraced him into her family and showered him with all the love he’d missed as a child. Then she lost her son a second time when the police told her the man she now faced in court was an imposter.

Apparently his real name was Václav Jelínek. But Special Branch, MI5 and even the judge who sentenced Erwin van Haarlem to prison in 1989 as the last Soviet Bloc agent of the Cold War had no clue to his real identity – he was the spy with no name.

Using the name Erwin van Haarlem, he was ordered by his masters to spy on the Royal Family and the Labour Party, to infiltrate Jewish groups and plunder the West’s nuclear secrets.

But his biggest betrayal was to the woman he tricked into believing she was his mother for more than a decade.


Paul Henderson worked on nine UK national newspapers as an investigative journalist, royal correspondent, news editor and editor. He covered foreign tours by Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the Middle East, Australia, Japan, the United States, Canada, and Europe. As “The Daily Mail”’s Chief Investigative Reporter, he tracked down and exclusively interviewed in Tripoli, Libya the men accused of the Lockerbie bombing.

Described by “The Guardian” as “one of the country’s finest pop culture historians”, Travis Elborough is the author of many books, including “Wish You Were Here: England on Sea”, “The Long-Player Goodbye, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles” and “The Atlas of Vanishing Places”, winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020.