Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy
ANNE SEBBA
(WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON, 304 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • tel 020 7799 4064

Julius and Ethel (pictured) Rosenberg have become enduring symbols of Soviet espionage in the West – and of the anti-Communist frenzy that gripped the United States in the early 1950s. Their executions were appalling and unprecedented (they were the first Americans to be executed for espionage during peacetime), and came after a trial that reflected badly on the fairness of America’s judiciary. Ethel’s guilt remains the object of often bitter contention, though that of Julius, once contested, is indisputable. The couple have come down in history as a package, but in this unusual biography Anne Sebba is determined to unpick Ethel’s own story. Her focus is on the personal history of a woman who became an international icon, though there was little in Ethel’s background to suggest her future fate.