A wartime romance, survival saga and murder mystery set in rural France during the First World War, from the bestselling author of 'Operation Mincemeat' and 'Agent Zig-Zag'.  Four young British soldiers find themselves trapped behind enemy lines at the height of the fighting on the Western front in August 1914; unable to get back to their units, they shelter in the tiny French village of Villeret. Living in daily fear of capture and execution, they are fed, clothed and protected by the villagers including the local matriarch, Madame Dessenne, the baker and his wife.  The self-styled leader of the band of fugitives, Private Robert Digby, falls in love with the twenty-year-old-daughter of one of his protectors and in November 1915, with war waging a few miles away, she gives birth to a baby girl. The child is just six months old when someone betrays the men to the Germans. They are captured, tried as spies and summarily condemned to death. Using the testimonies of the daughter, the villagers, detailed town hall records and most movingly -- the soldiers' last letters -- Ben Macintyre reconstructs an extraordinarily story of love, duplicity and shame -- ultimately seeking to discover through decades of village rumour the answer to the question, 'Who betrayed Private Digby and his men?'  In this new updated edition the mystery of who betrayed them is finally revealed.

A Foreign Field: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in the Great War

MACINTYRE, BEN

Biographies & Memoirs

A J L OUT OF BUSINESS / DELTA

The amazing tale of a resourceful and unscrupulous early-19th-century American adventurer who forges his own kingdom in the wilds of Afghanistan. In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush and declared himself Prince of Ghor, the heir to Alexander the Great. Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in Afghanistan, would become the model for Kipling's 'The Man Who Would be King', but the true story of his life is stranger than fiction. A soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist and writer, Harlan set off into the wilds of Central Asia after a failed love affair in 1820. Following a brief stint as a surgeon in the East India Company's army, he joined the court of the deposed Afghan monarch Shah Shujah, and then slipped into Kabul disguised as a Muslim priest to foment rebellion. For the next two decades he would play a pivotal role in the bloody politics of the region. As commander of the Afghan army, he became the first general since Alexander the Great to lead an army across the Hindu Kush. There, in a crowning act of imperial hubris, he declared himself a prince. But a year later he was on his way back to America, unceremoniously ousted by an invading British army. He would die in obscurity in San Francisco, still boasting to sceptical listeners that he had once been an Afghan king. Harlan was an extraordinary mixture of parts: eccentric, inquisitive and brave to the point of lunacy, he was also an acute observer who understood the Afghan people as no foreigner had done before. His warnings of the dangers of imperialism have an uncanny echo at a time when relations between the West and Afghanistan are under intense scrutiny. Using a trove of newly discovered documents, including Harlan's long-lost journals, Ben Macintyre has followed Harlan's footsteps to uncover an astonishing, untold chapter in the history of the Great Game.

Josiah the Great: The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King

Leaders & Notable People

HarperCollins, Publishers

Macintyre describes his 1991 journey to the Paraguayan site where Elisabeth Nietzsche and her husband founded a utopian Aryan colony in 1886. He also traces her return to Europe in 1889 to care for her sick brother, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and her orchestration of his rise to fame.

Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Perennial

1st 2016 Viking hardcover fine condition book in vg++ condition dw In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

SAS: Rogue Heroes - the Authorized Wartime History

History

Military

Crown

VIKING

'THE BEST TRUE SPY STORY I HAVE EVER READ' JOHN LE CARRÉ A thrilling Cold War story about a KGB double agent, by one of Britain's greatest historians On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket. The man was a spy. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever...

The Spy and the Traitor

Spy and the Traitor

VIKIN

Agent Sonya: Lover, Mother, Soldier, Spy

A TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER\nPublished in Paperback on 27 May\n'His best book yet' The Times\n'Macintyre's page-turner is a dazzling portrait of a flawed yet driven individual who risked everything (including her children) for the cause' Sunday Times\nDISCOVER THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF THE SPY WHO ALMOST KILLED HITLER - FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SPY AND THE TRAITOR\nUrsula Kuczynski Burton was a spymaster, saboteur, bomb-maker and secret agent. Codenamed 'Agent Sonya', her story has never been told - until now.\nBorn to a German Jewish family, as Ursula grew, so did the s' power. As a fanatical opponent of the fascism that ravaged her homeland, Ursula was drawn to communism as a young woman, motivated by the promise of a fair and peaceful society.\nFrom planning an assassination attempt on Hitler in Switzerland, to spying on the Japanese in Manchuria, to preventing nuclear war (or so she believed) by stealing the science of atomic weaponry from Britain to give to Moscow, Ursula conducted some of the most dangerous espionage operations of the twentieth century.\nIn Agent Sonya, Britain's most acclaimed historian Ben Macintyre delivers an exhilarating tale that's as fast-paced as any fiction. It is the incredible story of one spy's life, a life that would alter the course of history . . .\n'Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else' John Preston\n'Macintyre has found a real-life heroine worthy of his gifts as John le Carré's nonfiction counterpart' New York Times\n'This book is classic Ben Macintyre . . . quirky human details enliven every page' Spectator

Historical

Agent Sonya

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