Founder, podcast host and Cold War obsessive. The man behind the Spybrary podcast and The Dead Drop.
In 2017, after reading Len Deighton's Berlin Game, I went looking for a spy fiction and espionage history community. To my surprise, nothing like it existed. Crime and thriller readers had their hubs, but fans of espionage books had no safehouse to call home.
So I built one.
Spybrary started as a spy podcast that same year and grew into a worldwide community: thousands of members online, The Dead Drop newsletter, in-person meetups we call trefs, and now an online spy fiction and espionage historymagazine. Radio Times called Spybrary “espionage as entertainment”, and I'll take that.
These days my focus is the real thing: the history of espionage, especially the Cold War. I'm working my way through a self-directed Cold War curriculum, and I've walked the ground too. On a recent trip through Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius I stood in a preserved KGB listening post on the top floor of a Tallinn hotel. I also produced two seasons of Radio GDR, a podcast about East Germany. As Head of Espionage History, I'm bringing all of that to Spybrary: the true stories behind the fiction.
The Spybrary Spy Podcast has passed 300 episodes and more than a million downloads. I've interviewed bestselling thriller writers, former intelligence officers and historians, and I once sat down with Gary Oldman to talk about bringing Jackson Lamb to life in Slow Horses. The Dead Drop newsletter now reaches more than 11,000 spy fans every week. Spybrary and my take on the spy genre have been featured by BBC News, the Express and Radio Times.
August 2026 The Daily Express – Shane Whaley's Best Berlin Spy Books feature in the Berlin Wall supplement of the UK's Daily Express newspaper.
Before Spybrary, I spent more than 25 years in travel technology, in senior roles at Booking.com, GetYourGuide, Secret Escapes and FareHarbor. Along the way I founded Tourpreneur, a community and podcast for tour operators, which taught me how to build an audience and keep it. All told, I've produced and hosted more than 1,000 podcast episodes.
When I'm not reading, you'll find me at a wargaming table or watching football with friends. The best part of this job is meeting Spybrary listeners in person and of course discovering new (to me) espionage books.
With Paul Burke now leading our fiction coverage as Head of Fiction, Spybrary has never been in better hands. See you at the Safehouse!