Spy Memoir

John le Carré was one of the greatest novelists of his generation but also had an extraordinary life, from his childhood with a con man father to his inimitable career as a writer. From his involvement in the Cold War, time in Berlin, travels to Vietnam and engagement with world leaders, his experiences were truly remarkable. This collection of letters reveals John le Carré—the man, the writer and his world—for the first time and most intimately.

Few people can say they have seen some of the most significant moments of the 20th century unravel before their eyes. Marita Lorenz is one of them. Born in Germany at the outbreak of World War II, Marita was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp as a child. In 1959, she traveled to Cuba where she met and fell in love with Fidel Castro. Yet upon fleeing to America, she was recruited by the CIA to assassinate Castro. Torn by love and loyalty, she couldn't bring herself to slip him the lethal pills.

George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a senior officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least-known double agents, and remained unrepentant. In 1961, Blake was sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court

Boris Morros was a major figure in the 1930s and 1940s. The head of music at Paramount, nominated for Academy Awards, he then went on to produce his own films with Laurel and Hardy, Fred Astaire, Henry Fonda, and others. But as J. Edgar Hoover would discover, these successes were a cover for one of the most incredible espionage tales in the history of the Cold War-Boris Morros also worked for Russian intelligence. Morros's assignments took him to the White House, the Vatican, and deep behind the Iron Curtain.

Why you may ask, would they want to stop you from listening to my story? They say it’s because it tells too many secrets and that I’m a spy … a spy for the Brotherhood! Now you can follow my story from my birth in the Midwestern city of St. Louis, Missouri, to the gang-infested streets of Chicago, Illinois, and into the war-torn jungles of Vietnam.

Recruited by a foreign power in postwar Paris and sent to Washington, Winston Bates is without training or talent. He might be a walking definition of the anti-spy. Yet he makes his way onto the staff of the powerful Senator Richard Russell, head of the Armed Services Committee. From that perch, Bates has extensive and revealing contacts with the Dulles brothers, Richard Bissell, Richard Helms, Lyndon Johnson, Joe Alsop, Walter Lippman, Roy Cohn, and even Ollie North - to name but a few of the historical players in the American experience Winston befriends - and haplessly betrays for a quarter century.

Veteran Morgan Stanley banker Alok Sama thought he’d seen it all. Then he found himself chief dealmaker at the most influential technology investor in the world: SoftBank, backer of Arm Holdings, Yahoo, Nvidia, TikTok, Uber, T-Mobile, Alibaba and WeWork.

Wartime espionage has fascinated generation. This nonfiction audiobook tells the true stories of extraordinary women who lost their lives in the fight against the tyranny of Nazi fascism. Just as men on the battlefields of Europe and North Africa gave their lives to defeat the Nazi menace, so too did these brave women. From the unique and specific situations and experiences that led each one of them to do what they could for the war effort, to the overarching themes and beliefs in each of their lives that unified them in their opposition and resistance to oppression.

In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessive colleague in a hotel in South Kensington. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising, but that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable. She was one of Britain’s most daring and highly decorated secret agents, and the intelligence she gathered was a significant contribution to the Allied war effort.

In 2012, 21-year-old Dutch hacker David Schrooten was living at his parents’ house in the Netherlands and spending most of his time online. When he wasn’t squabbling with fellow hackers, he was making plans to visit his Romanian girlfriend. His life turned upside-down when Interpol agents arrested him at an airport in Romania on international hacking charges involving $63 million in damages. Soon Schrooten found himself extradited to the United States, a country where he had never been before.

Sex, Spies and Scandal is the story of John Vassall, a civil servant who was unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1962. Having been photographed in compromising positions while working at the British embassy in Moscow in 1954, Vassall was blackmailed into handing over secrets from the British Admiralty to his Soviet handlers, both in Moscow and in London, for more than seven years.

What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands? With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its allies.

The incredible true story of British special agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne, sisters who risked everything to fight for freedom during the Second World War. When elderly recluse Eileen Nearne died, few suspected that the quiet little old lady was a decorated WWII war hero. Volunteering to serve for British intelligence at age 21, Eileen was posted to Nazi-occupied France to send encoded messages of crucial importance for the Allies, until her capture by the Gestapo.

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born in The Netherlands during the late 19th century to a wealthy family. As she was growing up, her father went bankrupt. During her prime as a teenager, she seduced the headmaster and discovered the power of her sexuality to bewitch men. As a young woman, she responded to an ad by a Dutch army officer and was married to him shortly after. When her marriage failed, she returned to The Netherlands and from there went to Paris and became a cultural icon and an escort for the wealthiest and most influential of men.

The Skripal Files is the definitive account of how Skripal’s story fits into the wider context of the new spy war between Russia and the West. The Skripal Files explores the time Skripal spent as a spy in the Russian Military Intelligence, how he was turned to work as an agent by MI6, his imprisonment in Russia and his eventual release as part of a spy swap that would bring him to Salisbury, where on that fateful day he and his daughter found themselves fighting for their lives.

And the Rest Is History takes listeners on a traveling circus from Paris to Beirut, Baghdad, and beyond, introducing them to spies and terrorists, arms dealers and crooks, and along the way reveals a few surprises about the secret underbelly of recent history you won’t find in WikiLeaks. This book pinpoints precisely when the era of “fake news” actually began in America, and will change the way you think about journalism and journalists.

In November 1974, British MP and former cabinet minister John Stonehouse walked into the sea off a beach in Miami and disappeared, seemingly drowned. Then he was found—on the other side of the world, in Australia—and his extraordinary story began to come to light: a Labour cabinet minister and a devoted family man, also in a long-term affair with his secretary, and a spy for the Czech State Security agency, who had committed fraud and attempted to fake his own death to escape catastrophic business failures.

Following the Western Allies' overwhelming victory on D-Day, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin are all prepared to shape the future, and Operation Market Garden is Britain's attempt to beat the Russians to Berlin and be the first to help craft the new world order. With 10,000 men dropped into Arnhem and another 20,000 in Grave, the British are set to secure the area and declare victory. However, Dutch resistance hero Christian Lindemans has other plans. Lindemans is determined to help the Germans gain the lead in the war and begins to dismantle the operation from within.

For over 230 years, American schoolchildren have been taught about the story of Nathan Hale, or at least a legend of it, and in the process the myth of Hale and his apocryphal final words have immortalized the young man as America's most famous spy, despite his failed mission.

A former OSS spy looks back to his training in one of the key intelligence agencies in WWII, his experience in espionage, and his remarkable metamorphosis from boy to man, man to soldier, and soldier to spy. This is the story of Helias Doundoulakis, who became a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during WWII. Rescued by the SOE's Patrick Leigh Fermor, he escaped to Egypt and joined the American army and the OSS.