6/4/2024 3:20:33 PM

SOURCE: THE TIMES


Who is Ben Macintyre?

A columnist at The Times, he has worked as a newspaper correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. Besides his journalistic feat, he is the author of 12 books in non-fiction. The bestselling historian has penned astonishing tales with a wide array of characters. The incredible true stories are racy, thrilling and nail-biting.

 

Let’s look at some of his works:

 

1)     COLDITZ

 

The most infamous prison in history speaks of human grit and perseverance. The indomitable human spirit wrestles with hardships unspeakable.

 

2)     AGENT SONYA: LOVER, MOTHER, SOLDIER, SPY

 

Another incredible story of a female spy- Ursula Kuczynksi gathers secrets to help the Soviet Union build the atomic bomb. A mother of three and a devout homemaker Sonya Burton was no less than an ideal homemaker.

 

3)     SAS: ROUGE WARRIORS

 

Turned into a BBC series, the Warriors are the toughest! Spearheaded by Winston Churchill, the recruitment led to the formation of the world’s most popular organisation: the SAS.

 

4)     THE SPY AND THE TRAITOR: THE GREATEST ESPIONAGE STORY OF THE COLD WAR

 

Ben is not just Britain’s greatest historian, but a remarkable storyteller of true accounts. His treatment of the subject is raw, bold and thrilling. One of the greatest espionage stories of a KGB double agent has some priceless secrets to offer.

 

5)     A SPY AMONG FRIENDS: KIM PHILBY AND THE GREAT BETRAYAL

You know someone very well only to discover you hadn’t known them at all. Duplicity, betrayal, and conflicted conscience led to some of the most difficult ideological battles. For MI6 and CIA, Philby’s biography is perhaps the last tale of betrayal during the Cold War.

 

6)     AGENT ZIGZAG: A TRUE STORY OF NAZI ESPOINAGE, LOVE AND BETRAYAL

 

Agent Zigzag is Edie Chapman a double agent headed to thwart Britain's intelligence service. MI5 was Britain’s Agent Zigzag owing his allegiance to the Nazi camp. Operation Mincemeat is an elaborate of the deception ever conducted claiming to have changed the course of World War.

 

His other works are:

 

7)     Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies centres around 6 June 1944.

8)     The Napolean of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, the Real Moriarty is said to have been a model for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Moriarty, Sherlock’s nemesis

9)     The Last Word: Tales from the Tip of the Mother Tongue as the Daily Telegraph Books of the Year says are “…. Delightful nuggets on the uses and abuses of the English language”

10    For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond tells the tale of a masterful writer of spy stories, Ian Fleming, a journalist set out to write on February morning 1952.

11    A Foreign Field is a saga of a stranded soldier in foreign fields.

12    Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elizabeth Nietzche recounts the life of a bigot who founded- Nueva Germania-  a colony of racially pure in Paraguay. A mentor to Hilter, she also inspired the cult following of his brother’s philosophy.

13    Josiah the Great: The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King is an outstanding tale of an American wanderlust and adventurer who declared himself the heir to Alexander the Great.

 

IMAGE SOURCE: THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD