Adam has contributed numerous book reviews and feature articles to such newspapers as The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times; and to journals such as The Spectator, the Literary Review, and Slightly Foxed. He has engaged in several controversies in The Times Literary Supplement and made a small but learned contribution to The Journal of Military History.

He has frequently been interviewed on radio and television around the world, in Britain, Ireland, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Radio programmes he has appeared on include NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’, BBC’s ‘Start the Week’, ‘Front Row’, ‘Open Book’, ‘Meet the Author’, & ‘Last Word’; television includes documentaries and news programmes on BBC, ITV, Sky, and C-Span. A few years ago he took part in a BBC Radio ‘Head to Head’ programme with Sir Richard J. Evans, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, in which they re-enacted the famous debate between A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper on the origins of the Second World War. In 2021 he was interviewed on camera by StudioCanal for the tenth anniversary of the film of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In 2022 he was filmed at length for a forthcoming ITN television series on spying. As well as being interviewed, he has been a consultant on various documentaries, and most recently on the Apple series based on John le Carré’s memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel.