The daughter of the former spy Sergei Skripal chose Salisbury as the family’s British home after he was freed by Russian authorities, a book on the nerve agent poisonings says.

Yulia Skripal chose the Wiltshire city over Winchester and Chichester, according to The Skripal Files by the BBC journalist and historian Mark Urban.

On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin called Skripal a “scumbag” and a “traitor”, as he angrily denied allegations that the Kremlin ordered his poisoning.

Urban’s book, which is published on Thursday, says Skripal was initially reluctant to believe the Russian government had tried to kill him, and despite selling secrets to MI6, he was an “unashamed Russian nationalist”.

The book sets out how Skripal came to work for the west, his imprisonment and the spy swap that led to him settling in the UK.

But there are also intriguing domestic details about the Skripals’ life in Salisbury. When Urban visited him last year, he was struck by the signs that Skripal was killing time.

“There was a stack of jigsaw puzzles … I also saw an Airfix scale model of HMS Victory. Sergei had put Nelson’s flagship together, including rigging the masts with cotton, a fiddly task requiring considerable patience,” he says.

Also on display was a resin model of an English country cottage that had been given to Skripal by an MI6 case officer.

Urban told the Guardian he hoped the book would help people in Salisbury understand the global event that took place in the city in March.

“They have seen so much disruption to their lives, from blocked-off streets to worries about their kids’ getting contaminated. By writing this, I hope they can understand what Sergei Skripal did for the UK, and why he ended up in their midst,” he said.

“There is an enormous amount for people in the city to be proud of. Take the work of the doctors and nurses on Radnor Ward [the intensive care unit at Salisbury district hospital]. Presented with an unprecedented medical challenge in March, they rose to it.

“I think also the spirit of the community in simply carrying on and refusing to be cowed by the possibility of lasting novichok contamination has been remarkable.”