When John le Carre's third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, was published in 1963, it sparked an international literary furore and redefined the spy novel. To Graham Greene it was simple 'the best spy story I have ever read', and for J. B. Preistley is possessed 'an atmosphere of chilly hell'.

Fifty years on, Penguin Classics present the book anew, using a version of the original jacket published by Gollancz in 1963, including the copy written by Victor Gollancz himself. With added archival material from the time of its first publication and a new Afterword by the author, this edition reflects on a novel that for half a century has been read and celebrated as the ultimate Cold War thriller and a compulsive work of art.