Philby. Burgess. Maclean. If you're a student of Cold War spies (and if you're at Spybrary there's a decent chance you are), those names will be very familiar. The latter pair's 1951 defection helped to make public the most famous spy scandal of the era. In the decades since, they've also inspired countless works of...
If you're a fan of the spy-fi side of spy fiction chances are you're a fan of The Avengers. With Patrick Macnee as the debonair John Steed alongside fellow agents such as Diana Rigg's Emma Peel, it's become a quintessential piece of 1960s British television. Indeed, the series was part of my teenage years as...
Having read and very much enjoyed The Fever, the opening salvo from Michael Brady's Into The Shadows range, I was eager to dig into the second volume. This one would take the firmly established CIA non-official cover (NOC) officer Michael Brennan to Asia in what seemed to be another tale potentially ripped from the headlines....
Mick Herron and Spybrary Spy Podcast's man in the UK David Craggs Our man in the UK, David Craggs, has been out and about and was lucky enough to have lunch with the UK's top spy master, Mick Herron. Here is his top secret report direct from a table somewhere in Oxford : “After events in...
Could you make the cut as a Cold War Spy? Spybrary Spy Podcast Listener Clarissa Aykroyd reviews her experience of John le Carre's The Circus, a new immersive spy game in London. On Sunday, 9 September I took part in ‘John le Carré’s The Circus’, a real-life spy game devised by...
First appearing nearly thirty-five years ago in the pages of The Hunt For Red October, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan is arguably the closest thing to an American James Bond. Not only with a highly successful series of novels but also a trilogy of successful films in the early 1990s. Recently, however, the CIA analyst has...
Agent of Influence is a slim book at 83 pages, but one with significant effect. Author Jeremy Duns works his subtitled topic, “Antony Terry and the Shaping of Cold War Fact and Fiction”, weaving an utterly fascinating behind-the-curtain story I didn’t want to end. Duns, tell me this self-published edition is merely you dipping a toe...
My recent viewing of the film The Good Shepherd and my reading of the CIA History Staff's 2007 critique of the film left me curious about the fact behind the Hollywood fiction. Hitting upon a recommendation from that analysis and the film's archived website, I bought a book that had been sitting for months already...
The more observant of you will have noticed that we recently sailed past our 50th episode of the Spybrary Spy Podcast! I really had no idea if Spybrary had any legs when I started up a spy podcast so I am delighted listeners keep coming back for more. Apparently the majority of podcasts do not...
Having heard Shane interview author Michael Brady on the show nearly a year ago, Into The Shadows: The Fever has long been on my radar. It wasn't until Spy-Con this past spring that I finally acquired a copy of the novel in question and only in the last couple of weeks that I've had the...
