The international bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor reveals one of the last great untold spy stories of the twentieth century: the woman hidden in plain sight who set the stage for the Cold War.In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy Cotswolds, an unassuming woman lived in a small cottage with her children and machinist husband, Len. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she s...

The celebrated author of A Spy Among Friends and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Cold War-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union.If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophistica...

NEW YORK TIMES **BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES •NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE“Pure catnip to fans of World War II thrillers and a lot of fun for everyone else.” —Joseph Kanon, The Washington Post Book WorldThe “brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining” (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker) true story of the most successful—and certainly the strangest—deception ever carried...

**One of Indigo's Top 10 History Books of 2024A brilliant, seat-of-your-pants hostage-taking and daring SAS rescue mission of the Iran Embassy in London in 1980, this is Ben Macintyre at the very height of his story-telling powers.**On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Prince’s Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There, they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensu...

**Now a limited series on Prime Video! SAS: ROGUE HEROES, starring Connor Swindells, Jack O'Connell, Alfie Allen, and Dominic WestThe incredible untold story of World War II’s greatest secret fighting force, as told by the modern master of wartime intrigue.**Ben Macintyre's latest book of derring-do and wartime intrigue reveals the incredible story of the last truly unsung secret organization of World War II—Britain's Special Air Service, or the SAS. Facing long odds and a ...

For readers of World War II history, espionage, fans of John le Carré and Alan Furst, and of Ben Macintyre's more recent books.Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. In 1941, after training as German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane...

From the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor comes the ultimate true-life Cold War thriller: the untold story of a Russian double agent with a desperate secret—and the key to stopping a nuclear apocalypse.“Ben Macintyre has a rare ability to turn history and espionage upside down and give us true, colorful stories that astound us as they draw us in. Redwood might be his best.”—John GrishamIn 1981, KGB Major Vladi...

Now a major series on Prime Video starring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce"Reads like a story by Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, or John le Carré, leavened with a dollop of P.G. Wodehouse . . . [Macintyre] takes a fresh look at the grandest espionage drama of our era." —New York Times Book ReviewMaster storyteller Ben Macintyre's thrillingly ambitious A Spy Among Friends tackles the greatest spy story of all: the rise and fall of ...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLERNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, a definitive and surprising new narrative of one of history's most famous prisons--and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried to relentlessly escape their Nazi captors.**The myth of Colditz, the most infamous prison in history, has stood unchallenged for 70 years: prisoners of war, mustaches firmly set on stiff upper lips, defying the Nazis by tunnel...

Never before told, Ben Macintyre's The Englishman's Daughter is a harrowing tale of love, duplicity and their tragic consequences, which haunt the people of Villeret eight decades after the Great War."I have a rendezvous with death, at some disputed barricade." Alan Seeger, 1916In the first days of World War I four soldiers, left behind as the British army retreated through northern France under the first German onslaught, ...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKFrom the bestselling, acclaimed author of A Spy Among Friends, The Spy and the Traitor, and Rogue Heroes, the vastly entertaining saga of Adam Worth, the most notorious bank thief of Victorian society and the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty.The Victorian era's most infamous and iconic thief, Adam Worth, was known as the Napoleon of Crime. Suave, cun...

The official history of Ian Fleming and James Bond by the bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat'Marvellously entertaining and informative' Spectator'Thrilling' Sunday Times'An entertaining mix of history, espionage, biography, and post-war sociology' Literary Review_____________________'I am going to write t...