Gratuit avec l’offre d'essai
Écouter avec l’offre
-
The Happy Traitor
- Lu par : Kevin Spink
- Durée : 6 h et 14 min
Impossible d'ajouter des articles
Échec de l’élimination de la liste d'envies.
Impossible de suivre le podcast
Impossible de ne plus suivre le podcast
2,95 €/mois pendant 3 mois
Acheter pour 27,42 €
Aucun moyen de paiement n'est renseigné par défaut.
Désolés ! Le mode de paiement sélectionné n'est pas autorisé pour cette vente.
Vous êtes membre Amazon Prime ?
Bénéficiez automatiquement de 2 livres audio offerts.Bonne écoute !
Description
Those people who were betrayed were not innocent people. They were no better nor worse than I am. It's all part of the intelligence world. If the man who turned me in came to my house today, I'd invite him to sit down and have a cup of tea.
George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a senior officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least-known double agents, and remained unrepentant.
In 1961, Blake was sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court.
On the surface, Blake was a charming, intelligent and engaging man and, most importantly, a seemingly committed patriot. Underneath, a ruthlessly efficient mole and key player in the infamous 'Berlin Tunnel' operation. This illuminating biography tracks Blake from humble beginnings as a teenage courier for the Dutch underground during the Second World War, to the sensational prison-break from Wormwood Scrubs that inspired Hitchcock to write screenplay.
Through a combination of personal interviews, research and unique access to Stasi records, journalist Simon Kuper unravels who Blake truly was, what he was capable of and why he did it.
Commentaires
"Kuper provides a different and valuable perspective, humane and informative." (John Le Carré, author of Agent Running in the Field)
"A deeply human read, wonderfully written, on the foibles of a fascinating, flawed, treacherous and sort of likeable character." (Philippe Sands)