In this remarkable tale about an unremarkable man, Nick Barratt delves into the murky waters of the British and Soviet secret services of the 1920s and 1930s to reveal the shocking story of his great uncle Ernest Holloway Oldham – known as ARNO to his Russian 'handlers'. After serving in the British army during World War One, Ernest Holloway Oldham was drafted into the Communications Department of the UK Foreign Office, where he was charged with delivering encrypted messages to embassies and consulates around the world. Over the course of the next decade or so, Ernest was drawn deeper and deeper into the paranoid underworld of preCold War espionage and into a doublelife that became the darkest of secrets.