Lantern Network also shows off many of Allbeury's best traits. There's the theme of the past coming back to haunt the present, something that appears in a number of his works (including in The Twentieth Day of January) is present here. Also evident is his quickly drawn characterizations, here minus some of the caricaturing he...
Betrayal in Berlin with author Steve Vogel On Episode 90 of the Spybrary Podcast, host Shane Whaley interviews Steve Vogel the author of Betrayal in Berlin – The True Story of the Cold War's Most Audacious Espionage Operation. Betrayal in Berlin is one of the best Cold War non-fiction espionage books I have read. For...
One of the joys of listening to and being involved with the community around the Spybrary podcast has been discovering books I might never have heard of otherwise. Clive Egleton's The Russian Enigma (aka Pandora's Box) is just such an example of that, having been posted about by C.G. Faulkner whom I had the pleasure...
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...
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...
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...
Chances are, if you're reading this blog post, you're a podcast listener. Non-fiction podcasts such as Spybrary aren't the only things out there though. The rise of the podcast has also led to a renaissance in audio drama, the medium of sound and story formerly seen as being on the brink of extinction. One of...
Joyce Wayne – Last Night of the World And now for something completely different. A spy story that is not set in Berlin, DC, London or Moscow but in Ottawa, Canada of all places. On Episode 38 of the Spybrary Spy Podcast author Joyce Wayne reveals more about her novel based on true events and...
The Wende Museum Brush Pass Review with Gary Dexter Its time to party like its 1989 on this edition of the Spybrary Spy Podcast. Spybrarian Gary Dexter recently visited the Wende Museum in Los Angeles and has transmitted his brush pass review of the Wende Museum for fellow Spy and Cold War Fans. We have...
About John Le Carre and the Cold War Toby Manning recently published his work which critically examines John Le Carre and the Cold War. Toby joins Shane Whaley on the Spybrary Spy Podcast to tell us more. Toby became a Le Carre fan at the age of 13. Having watched the Alec Guinness Tinker Tailor...
