My Family and Other Spies

byAlistair Wood, David Rintoul (Read by)

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All families have secrets. But Alistair Wood’s family have more than most. . He grew up within the four (very high) walls of SIS’s specialist training camp, surrounded by the most senior and colourful characters in the Service’s history. His mother was one of only a handful of female agents to have operated behind enemy lines in Berlin. And his father, an ostensibly heroic humanitarian who died ‘in the field’ in Bosnia at 82, had in fact led a highly secret double life since his summary (and still classified) expulsion from the Service forty years earlier...

This book is simply stunning. It might be the best non-fiction book I’ve ever read about post-war SIS, and Alistair’s unique (an overused word, but in this sense, entirely justified) perspective allows him to draw back the curtain on one of the most secretive organisations in the world, in a way that nobody else has done, or could do. The story of JBW is picaresque, intriguing, dramatic and a window onto the frontlines of World War II and Cold War spying, offering insights I have never before seen on the printed page. It’s also a moving personal story about a son’s attempt to understand his father, and very funny in an understated, British way. This is a book that everyone interested in British Intelligence will devour, shaking their heads in disbelief at the extraordinary stories as they do so

Charles Beaumont

About Alistair Wood

As one of the only members of his family not to have been employed by the Secret Intelligence Service, Alistair Wood has enjoyed a reassuringly respectable (and successful) career in advertising, working in the UK, US, Korea, and South-East Asia. He lives in London.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9781405972802
  • Length: 634 minutes
  • Price: £14.00
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