I live in Paris, and every morning on my way to work, I cycle past the Bataclan—the music hall where 90 people were murdered during the November 2015 jihadi attacks. Around the time of those attacks, I started writing my biography of George Blake, the British Dutchman who became a KGB double agent. In many ways, he was a forerunner of European jihadis. Though the parallels are inexact, they are illuminating.
Blake was born in Rotterdam in 1922. His mother was a Dutch Protestant; his Jewish father from what was then Constantinople had acquired British citizenship by fighting in the British Army in World War I. Blake grew up as a fundamentalist Calvinist, who dreamed of becoming a pastor.
