Spybrary Spy Podcast

This week we welcome the former Home Secretary and best-selling author Alan Johnson to the Spybrary Podcast. In this informative and fun chat, Spybrary host Shane Whaley asks Alan Johnson how his background as Home Secretary helped him to write his fiction books Late Train to Gipsy Hill and One of Our Ministers is Missing. The Director General of MI5 reports to the Home Secretary, and whilst we knew Alan Johnson would not share details of those meetings, Shane could not resist asking him what advice he would give to a new Home Secretary regarding managing the working relationship with MI5. That and more in this episode of the Spybrary Spy Podcast

This week we welcome Benjamin Cunningham to the show. Cunningham wrote the recently released book The Liar: How a Double Agent in the CIA Became the Cold War's Last Honest Man a book that the publisher calls “the Cold War meets Mad Men in the form of Karel Koecher, a double agent whose shifting loyalties and over-the-top hedonism reverberated from New York to Moscow.” It’s a wild story of swapping secrets, wife swapping and spy swaps.  We talk about the Prague Spring, declassified documents, and interviewing difficult subjects. All that and more in this episode with Spybrary host Jeff Quest.

Intelligence Historian and Author Nigel West joins Spybrary Spy Podcast host Shane Whaley to share more about his latest book Spies Who Changed History plus, he answers your questions on the Wilson Coup, the Steele Dossier on Trump, meeting Anthony Blunt, Ian Fleming and many more!

Sunday Times Chief Political Commentator and spy book fan Tim Shipman talks with Ben Macintyre about his latest work based on Colditz, Prisoners of the Castle.   The “entertaining yet objective and often-moving account” (The Wall Street Journal) of one of history’s most notorious prisons—and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their captors, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs. Prisoners of the Castle traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told. Books And Resources mentioned in this episode of Spies and Books - Spybrary with Ben MacIntyre   Ben Macintyre Official Website Prisoners of the Castle - Colditz Escape from Colditz Board Game Tim Shipman Official Website Tim Shipman's top 125 spy writers - ranked The Spybrary Community for spy fans

Spybrary's man in Station L (Northern Sector) author Andy Onyx slipped us this brush pass review of Javier Marias's thriller Your Face Tomorrow: Fever And Spear He shares why spy book readers will enjoy this modern spy novel. "Your Face Tomorrow by the Spanish novelist of note, Javier Maras. I say novelist of note because Maras has sold over 6 million copies of his works worldwide to date. In amongst, which is this spy fiction trilogy published between 2009 and 2017.  

What's life like working as a spy? Spy author Bevan G Roberts chats with former Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) and MI6 trained agent handler Warren Reed to find out. Most of us are fascinated by the craft of human intelligence. It's a trade as old as time, involving betrayal, secrecy, and most of all, danger! Danger to the operative danger, to the agent, danger, to innocent people and to nations. And it's the human side of this danger that keeps us turning the pages and feeds our desire to learn more. So what better than to interview a real spy to find out more about the business of espionage, a former agent handler that not only practiced the trade, but also a man who experienced the worst aspects of it. With Kingdom of Spies Author Bevan G Roberts and former real-life spy Warren Reed.

Spybrary field agent Chris Lueloff slipped us this brush pass review of Bill Granger's spy thriller November Man series Lueloff shares why spy book readers will enjoy Granger's work and boldly declares that Peter Devereaux is an American Quiller. Agree, disagree? Come and let us know your thoughts in the Spybrary fans community. More About the November Man spy series according to Randall at Spy Guys and Gals. 'Peter Deveraux, codename the November Man, is an agent for the CIA. This highly experience agent whose first name is never revealed, works for R Section of the CIA Under a man named Hanley, referred to as an "asshole" by Deveraux in the second page of the first book and expanded upon throughout the series. He is extremely good at his job, which makes him valuable, but he doesn't suffer well the fools and incompetents above him, which makes him undesirable. It makes the series delicious. Also making the series something to read are two recurring characters.'

Join Spies and Books, Spybrary host Shane Whaley as he finds outs more about the traitor Robert Hanssen in this interview with author Lis Wiehl   New York Times bestselling author and former federal prosecutor Lis Wiehl delivers a behind-the-scenes account of how FBI agent Robert Hanssen, a church-going father of five, sold national security secrets to Russia for more than two decades--and how America's current political climate makes it still possible today. Three years into his career as an FBI agent, Robert Hanssen made the shocking decision to volunteer as a spy for the Soviet Union, beginning two decades of espionage that the Department of Justice considers "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history." Drawing upon deep archival research and exclusive personal interviews--including unique access to FBI and CIA agents and Hanssen's friends and family--former federal prosecutor and Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl has written a propulsive, page-turning thriller detailing how this unassuming father of five, a devout Catholic and member of Opus Dei, got away with sharing highly classified information with Russia, including the names of FBI operatives within the KGB and details about America's military weapons operations. When FBI agents--with help from an ex-KGB officer--arrested Hanssen in 2001, the resulting investigations laid bare the weaknesses in the FBI's internal security. In her careful analysis, Wiehl uncovers surprising reasons behind Hanssen's devastating acts of betrayal and sheds light on the very real possibility of another mole in operation today, particularly given our current social and political climate.

In this conversation with Spybrary host Shane Whaley, award-winning spy author Dan Fesperman reveals more about the real-life espionage events that inspired his latest novel, set in Berlin 1990, Winter Work. The Berlin Wall has fallen and in the ensuing power vacuum, a former Stasi officer and a CIA agent must fight for their lives. On a chilly early morning walk on the wooded outskirts of Berlin, Emil Grimm finds the body of his neighbor, a fellow Stasi officer named Lothar, with a gunshot wound to the temple and a pistol in his right hand. Despite appearances, Emil suspects murder. If it were a few months earlier, he would have known just what to do. But now, as East Germany disintegrates, being a Stasi colonel is more of a liability than an asset. More troubling still is that Emil and Lothar were actively involved in a final clandestine mission. Now Emil must finish the job alone and on uncertain ground where old alliances seem to be shifting by the day. Meanwhile, CIA agent Claire Saylor is sent to Berlin to contact a ranking Stasi officer, although details of her mission are suspiciously sketchy and her superior seems to have a hidden agenda. When her first rendezvous goes dangerously awry, she realizes the mission is far more delicate than she has been led to believe. With the rules of the game-changing quickly, and as their two missions intersect, Emil and Claire find themselves on unlikely common ground, fighting for their lives against a powerful enemy lurking in the shadows.

Listen in to our first ever live episode of Spybrary. A panel to discuss Tim Shipman's list of the best 125 spy writers. Tim reveals more about his method and criteria for selecting this monster list of spy authors. Joining us are Professor Penny Fielding, author and critic Jeremy Duns, spy blogger Matthew Bradford, and John le Carre book collector Steven Ritterman to run the rule over Tim's pick of the best spy writers. You can find the list and watch the live stream at www.spybrary.com/timslist