FX’s show The Americans in real life: What would you do if you discovered your parents were secretly Russian spies? Tim and Alex Foley, both born in Canada but living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, discovered in 2010 they were born to “unlawful agents of a foreign government” when the FBI raided their house. The Guardian’s Shaun Walker, who covers Tim and Alex’s story, write: “the FBI had not made a mistake, and the truth was so outlandish, it defied comprehension. Not only were their parents indeed Russian spies, they were Russians. The man and woman the boys knew as Mom and Dad really were their parents, but their names were not Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. Those were Canadians who had died long ago, as children; their identities had been stolen and adopted by the boys’ parents. Their real names were Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova. They were both born in the Soviet Union, had undergone training in the KGB and been dispatched abroad as part of a Soviet programme of deep-cover secret agents, known in Russia as the ‘illegals’.” Tim and Alex were stripped of their Canadian citizenship as a consequence, something they believe to be “unfair and illegal that they are expected to answer for the sins of their parents” as they have no wish to live in Russia even though they visit their parents in Moscow every few months. Alex told Walker “it is not his place to judge his parents, but that six years ago he spent a long period wrestling with ‘the big question’ of whether he hated them or felt betrayed. In the end, he came to one conclusion: that they were the same people who had raised him lovingly, whatever secrets they hid.”