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...
I am quite fond of the saying that “truth is stranger than fiction.” As those of us who read spy fact (and those fiction works which blur the boundaries between the two) know, it is often the case. The film The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro and released by Universal Pictures in...
Coming up in the next few weeks on the Spybrary Spy Podcast We celebrate Episode 50 with the man who kicked it all off on Episode 1 – Rob Mallows from Deighton Dossier. (Brief episode where we talk about the Berlin meet up and read a special message sent to...
Transmission received from Spybrarian Matthew Kresal: Review of The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carre. One of the familiar tropes of the spy genre is an intelligence agency recruiting a civilian into an operation. In fact, one might even say it's become a cliche at this point. So perhaps it comes as something of...
