The man he knew as “Control” is dead, and the young Turks who forced him out now run the Circus. But George Smiley isn’t quite ready for retirement—especially when a pretty, would-be defector surfaces with a shocking accusation: a Soviet mole has penetrated the highest level of British Intelligence. Relying only on his wits and a small, loyal cadre, Smiley recognizes the hand of Karla—his Moscow Centre nemesis—and sets a trap to catch the traitor.
The Oscar-nominated feature film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) and features Gary Oldman as Smiley, Academy Award winner Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), and Tom Hardy (Inception).
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Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. In 1941, after training as German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted M15, the British Secret service, and for the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began.
Based on recently declassified files, Agent Zigzag tells Chapman’s full story for the first time. It’s a gripping tale of loyalty, love, treachery, espionage, and the thin and shifting line between fidelity and betrayal.
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Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence.
As the battle in Europe rages, Ava and Elaine find themselves connecting through coded messages and discovering hope in the face of war.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London comes moving new novel inspired by the true history of America’s library spies of World War II.
Find out moreThis year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and China. With a change of government in Canberra, the Chinese government is reaching out to influential groups and individuals in the country.
Read moreAustralia’s new government on Thursday dropped the 4-year-old prosecution of a lawyer over his alleged attempt to help East Timor prove that Australia had spied on the then-fledgling nation’s government during multibillion-dollar oil and gas negotiations in 2004.
Continue readingFor a decade, Bernard Collaery has been at the centre of an extraordinary legal saga in Australia. It involves one of the country’s biggest diplomatic scandals – a tale of spies, oil and accusations of greed.
An esteemed lawyer, Mr Collaery had been staring down a possible jail sentence for helping to expose allegations of Australian wrongdoing in East Timor.
But last week, the case reached an unexpected conclusion.
“The whole things reads like some sort of bad novel,” says senior barrister Geoffrey Watson.
Read moreAs of July 12, there had been 333 mass shooting incidents in the US since the start of this year – already nearing the 335 logged by the Gun Violence Archive for the whole of 2018.
Continue reading2009 was the centenary year of MI6, The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). To mark the occasion, they invited the artist James Hart Dyke behind their closed doors and into the secret world of espionage. The resulting series of paintings and drawings formed the subject of a commercial exhibition ‘A year with MI6’, at Mount Street Galleries, London. The pictures represented an outsider’s unique interpretation of an existence that, for those who work in SIS, can often be dangerous and surreal.
Know moreFrom water-powered textile mills, to mechanical looms, much of the machinery that powered America’s early industrial success was “borrowed” from Europe.
Read moreA growing number of unscrupulous companies are using bots or fake accounts to run smear campaigns against their competitors on social media, it is claimed.
Know moreSri Lanka’s government is broke, and the country is in chaos. Pakistan just got an emergency $4 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Ghana has asked for a rescue package, too. Protests over mounting inflation have broken out from Ecuador to Tunisia.
Read moreForecasting has always been at the forefront of decision making and planning. The uncertainty that surrounds the future is both exciting and challenging, with individuals and organisations seeking to minimise risks and maximise utilities. The large number of forecasting applications calls for a diverse set of forecasting methods to tackle real-life challenges. This article provides a non-systematic review of the theory and the practice of forecasting. It uses data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in partnership with The World Bank, as part of IMF’s World Seaborne Trade Monitoring System.
Read the reportRussia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent shock waves across the world. From geopolitics and cybersecurity to food chains, energy and world trade, the war has provoked sudden, disruptive shifts on a massive, global scale.
Read the reportMembers of the House of Commons whose lives were more interesting than most cloak-and-dagger fiction.
I don’t know why this came up now, but Robert Boston mentioned no 5, of whom I had not heard. Twitter supplied the rest. All I did was put them in chronological order.
Read the full pieceWhy do intelligence estimates sometimes fail to prepare policymakers for change? Some explanations suggest the fault lies with insufficient data collection, weak analysis, or unreceptive audiences. But while more data and better analysis would always be welcome, they may not materially reduce uncertainty; and explanations centering on the intelligence-policymaker relationship offer no systematic critique of the orthodoxy that keeps intelligence and policymakers at arm’s length.
Read the full pieceWe begin this season with Ric Prado, a former CIA officer who trained the Contras in Central America—a rebel group that tried to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The Reagan administration’s covert support for the Contras eventually led to a government scandal known as the Iran-Contra affair, a congressional investigation, and dozens of indictments. Prado spent three years with the Contras. He describes a particular mission to blow up the Nicaraguan port in Puerto Cabezas.
For more on the Contras, go back and listen to season one’s “The Jumper.” Eugene Hasenfus, who helped deliver arms to the Contras, describes parachuting from a burning plane and getting captured by Nicaraguan forces.
Find out moreThe crash site is a horrifying scene. A sunburnt field of wheat and sunflowers peppered with hundreds of bodies that have fallen from the sky. The victims have been stripped naked by the force of the wind. Some are still strapped into the seats of a plane that has been torn to pieces in mid-air. Many of these bodies are eerily well persevered. Others are completely ripped apart.
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