Gordon Corera, Charlie English and Daria Santini talk to Ava Glass

Spies are glamorous, dangerous, heroic and utterly compelling – and the perfect subject for the books we devour, in both fiction and non-fiction. Step inside Hay Festival’s first ever Salon to celebrate our inaugural Crime Day, where our panel of spy writers discuss the incredible stories they’ve uncovered in their work. They swap tales of secret worlds and hidden influence, and of people whose courage and ingenuity quietly shaped history. And they compare the real-life agents with the beloved spies of fiction who fill our bookshelves.

Gordon Corera has been the BBC’s security correspondent for two decades, and now co-presents the podcast The Rest is Classified. His latest book The Spy in the Archive tells the story of a KGB archivist turned traitor. Charlie English is a former head of international news at the Guardian, and author of The CIA Book Club, the story of how 10 million books were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the cold war. Daria Santini’s book A Woman Named Edith is a major new biography of the photographer and Soviet agent who recruited Kim Philby. They talk to Ava Glass, the UK’s leading female spy fiction writer and a former investigative journalist.