Ben Macintyre is in the top ten of my all time favourite authors...although possibly that should say 'favourite reporters'. Because report is what he does...and he does it really well. Taking both well known and 'new to me' episodes and events of the past 100 years and retelling/reporting them in riveting style. Crimes, wars, politics, people, espionage- I just checked out his list of titles and I would or have, given all of them well deserved five star reviews. All well deserved for their metic...

With the current state of affairs between Russian and the UK, this story is more relevant than ever, and I suspect it will always be of interest to those who enjoy this genre. Ben MacIntyre is a fantastic writer and knows exactly how to grab the reader and hold them in place from first page to last. I found this as compelling and thrilling as any fiction book would be. Accurate and meticulously researched, this is a book not to be missed. I will be sure to look out for any future work the author...

Warning: Do not start the final third unless you have nothing else to do.Literally could not stop—I was at the edge of my seat.What. A. Story. Riveting and unputdownable. Reads like a movie instead of a real life tale.Will be reading more Ben Macintyre._____*EDIT* I've since read FIVE more Macintyre books: A Spy Among Friends (5 stars), Operation Mincemeat (5 stars), Rogue Heroes (5 stars), Agent Sonya (5 stars), and Double Cross (3 stars) — and I'm still looking forward to reading the rest of h...

5 " superb, exciting, edge of your seat" stars !! 10th Favorite Read of 2018 Award Mr. MacIntyre has written a superb and thrilling book about one of our foremost living spies.Mr. Oleg Gordievsky was Russian KGB that became an agent for M-16 in England and over the course of the Cold War was able to feed England important information that may have led not only to our world being safe from nuclear disaster but perhaps also to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The author was able to interview

“The spy and the traitor” is a marvelous story of a double agent’s professional and personal life during the Cold War named Oleg Gordievsky. Oleg was born in 1938 in a Family which all it’s members was KGB officers so he lived his predetermined destiny to become a successful KGB agent in order to gain respect of his family and community. But he had an enormous difference with his colleagues from the very beginning of his career because he was open minded, a keen history and economy reader, a per...

Undoubtedly, relations between Russia and the UK are at their lowest for many years, which, perhaps, makes this book even more relevant. Ben Macintyre takes us back to the 1980’s and the Cold War, with his usual brand of, almost schoolboy, enthusiasm and ability to give the most important, political events, the human angle necessary to make you care about those involved. This, then, is the story of ‘Operation Pimlico;’ an emergency escape plan by which MI6 planned to remove Oleg Gordievsky, a KG...

Absolutely riveting!

Macintyre's best yet! A truly staggering story told by a consummate storyteller. That being said, it's pretty clear that the book's sources are fairly biased towards Gordievsky, and while Macintyre does a good job noting where his sources are displaying overt nostalgia or actively misremembering motivations, there's not a strong voice to counteract the overall tone of the narrative SIS officers and agents are providing here. Still, that's not really why I read Ben Macintyre: I read him for the p...

This is this the second book by Ben Mcintyre I have listened to recently. The first one was Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy. Again, this book focuses on a real life spy story. In this case, the focus is a Soviet agent who becomes a double agent and provided secrets to the British government during the 1980s.. Macintyre traces the agent’s background, how he changed sides and how he was betrayed. I liked Agent Sonya a bit more — perhaps because she was a woman and such an unlikely sp...

The Spy and the Traitor is the true tale of Oleg Gordievsky, a high-level KGB agent, who worked as a double agent for Great Britain and MI6. Gordievsky helped bring about the demise of the Soviet Union, and The Spy and the Traitor details his career and the story of how a CIA agent was almost his downfall. It is a fabulous, nail-biting read that flows like a fast-paced thriller especially as the author carefully unveils the details of Gordievsky’s exciting escape from Moscow in 1985. In an era w...

Another fascinating spy story from Ben Macintyre! "The Spy and the Traitor" focuses on Oleg Gordievsky, who was a KGB agent but was also secretly spying for the British intelligence service in the 1970s and 80s.I didn't know much about Gordievsky before starting this book, which made the true story seem all the more incredible. Previously I had read and enjoyed Macintyre's "A Spy Among Friends," which was about Kim Philby, a British agent who was secretly spying for the KGB. If you are intereste...

Excellent account on life of Oleg Gordievsky (if you want to check for his autobiography - check Next Stop Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky). Ben Macintyre knows how to write about spies - what make them moving and doing stuff they did. Another great books just finished recently is A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. Both are highly recommended.

When you stay up all night finishing a book you know it's good. I couldn't put it down.

The true story of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB agent for the USSR who turned spy and provided information to the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985. This book reads like a spy thriller and I had to keep reminding myself that the events described here actually happened. In fact some of the coincidences, mistakes and lucky turns of fate feel so unlikely that had it been a novel penned by John le Carré I’d have been crying foul, moaning about how contrived the story was. This truly is

Amazing book, and even more amazing that it's a historical nonfiction and all TRUE! And I couldn't put it down it was so compelling and well written. I'm a huge fan of the spy genre in general, and I think this is one of the best I've read. You certainly get a very real sense of what it is like to be a spy and what Gordievsky's life must have been like.

An exceptional read!Everything you could want from a spy story: descriptions of trade craft, code names, depictions of all the facets of being a spy, from the humdrum review and contact of low level targets to moments of pants-distressing terror. And all the more captivating for it all being true!The names have been changed, but the events spanning around two decades during the height of the Cold War are all very much non-fiction. Oleg Gordievsky, starting when merely a newly minted KGB man in C...

I wish I could bottle the feeling of exhilaration I had while reading this atmospheric, tense, unbelievable but true spy thriller. It's the kind of story John le Carré wrote, the kind of geopolitical map that still animates strategy games decades after the end of the Cold War, and the kind of slow burn that every TV showrunner is trying to conjure up. I don't want to spoil it by summarizing, but as for why it's not a bestseller, I can only hypothesize that it is a fairly long book that requires

Another excellent spy story by Macintyre. This one was harder to get into for me than his others- so many Russian names, places, organizational schools or government entities. But it's still an enthralling review of this man's family, life, associations etc. It is SO telling that he (and his mother in a former era) had huge misgivings about Russian authoritarian systems and found that they could never express them openly. Or only in rare tangents to those who they loved, most trusted etc. And th...

Ben Macintyre is John le Carré's literary heir. But his stories are real. His newest, and best, book perfectly captures the tedium of most spy work alleviated only the the heart-thumping terror of when things go wrong. And spies being human, things always go wrong in the most mundane of ways.

What is happening to me with my recent love of dad nonfiction? Between this and Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin's Spies last year I now actually enjoy spy stories? Life will surprise you like that sometimes.Anyway I didn’t love this one as unconditionally as I loved that book, but I see why Ben MacIntyre is so popular. The escape part of this was pretty tense, although reading it while on the subway probably heightened the anxiety somewhat. Even though we