The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad tells the story of Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy against Britain. In a rough-and-ready shop in Soho in Victorian London, Mr. Verloc lives a humble existence sustaining himself, his wife, her infirm mother, and her disabled brother, Stevie. But all is not as it seems with Mr. Verloc, a secret agent in the employ of a foreign government.

Verloc is a businessman who owns a shop which sells pornographic material, contraceptives and bric-a-brac. His friends are a group of anarchists of which Comrade Ossipon, Michaelis, and ‘The Professor’ are the most prominent. The group produces anarchist literature in the form of pamphlets entitled F.P.-The Future of the Proletariat. 

Although a member of an anarchist cell, Verloc is also secretly employed by the embassy of a foreign country, but Mr. Vladimir, the new First Secretary in the Embassy is not satisfied with Verloc’s contribution. In order to redeem himself, Verloc must carry out an operation – the destruction of Greenwich Observatory by a bomb.