8 Sept 2026
Fast growing listernship as featured in The Times
Mark Logan, the former MP and UK–Asia specialist, features as guide in the latest episode of Spy Cities, the espionage history podcast produced by Chatterbox Audio.
The episode, released on 2 September 2026, transports listeners back to the lawless, spy-saturated Shanghai of the 1920s and 30s, a city Logan knows intimately from his years as a Mandarin-speaking foreign office official based there.
Spy Cities is hosted by spy novelist Angus Blair and former diplomat David Ludlow, both trustees of the Cambridge Security Initiative, the security and intelligence body chaired by former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove. Each episode traces the real history behind a single city's espionage past, following the operatives - real and fictional - who moved through its hotels, bars and backstreets.
For the Shanghai episode, Logan's own background made him a natural fit as guide: a former Member of Parliament with a degree in Modern Chinese Studies from Oxford, near-native Mandarin, and first-hand diplomatic experience in China spanning two decades.
Together with the hosts, he traces the careers of some of the era's most consequential intelligence figures: a young Zhou Enlai, later Chinese premier; the Soviet master spy Richard Sorge; a young Wallis Simpson, whose own Shanghai years remain the subject of enduring rumour; and Ursula Kuczynski, the Soviet agent known as "Agent Sonya."
Together, their stories trace how pre-revolutionary Shanghai's underworld helped shape the China that followed.
The appearance adds to Logan's growing footprint in Anglo-Asian media, alongside his BBC Radio appearances and columns for outlets including the South China Morning Post, Nikkei and Global Times, and extends his long-standing interest in the history behind today's UK–China relationship.
The episode, "Spy Cities: Shanghai," is available on Spotify and all major podcast platforms.
Listen to the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0nx1SaZvQD16A0AmYV9VFQ?si=d5937877b31b47f2