Spy Europe

After the Second World War, many of the men and women who had worked at Bletchley Park moved on to GCHQ: the British government's new facility established to fight the KGB. The Spies of Winter explores the early years of GCHQ as it navigated its way through a tumultuous era - from the defection of the Cambridge Five and the treachery of atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs to the collapse of the British Empire and the emergence of the US as a superpower.

One morning in May 1671, a man disguised as a parson daringly attempted to seize the crown jewels from the Tower of London. Astonishingly, he managed to escape with the regalia and crown before being apprehended. And yet he was not executed for treason. Instead, the king granted him a generous income, and he became a familiar strutting figure in the royal court's glittering state apartments. This man was Colonel Thomas Blood, a notorious turncoat and fugitive from justice.

The Skripal Files is the definitive account of how Skripal’s story fits into the wider context of the new spy war between Russia and the West. The Skripal Files explores the time Skripal spent as a spy in the Russian Military Intelligence, how he was turned to work as an agent by MI6, his imprisonment in Russia and his eventual release as part of a spy swap that would bring him to Salisbury, where on that fateful day he and his daughter found themselves fighting for their lives.

Blandford Candy is sent to London, after an illicit affair, and joins the Roundhead army to fight against the King, taking part in the Battle of Edgehill. A reluctant hero if ever there was one, he becomes a spy for the cause - and, through luck or judgement, uncovers more than one Royalist plot. His love of wine and the fairer sex prove both a curse and a blessing for the agent. Blandford soon earns the enmity of the King’s spy mistress Jane Whorwood, and patronage of the great parliamentarian leader John Hampden.

Ireland’s Secret War reveals strategic Nazi intentions for Ireland and the real role of leading government figures of the time, placing Dan Bryan and G2—the military intelligence branch of the Irish Defence Forces—at the centre of the country’s battle against Nazi Germany. With the help of over 35 hours of previously unpublished audio recordings that were held in storage in Northern California for over 50 years, Marc Mc Menamin reveals the extraordinary unheard history of WWII in Ireland, told from the point of view of the main protagonists.

The year 1942 marked the turning point of World War II. The Americans destroyed the Japanese Battle Fleet in the decisive engagements of Midway and the Coral Sea. General Montgomery defeated General Rommel at El Alamein. But for President Roosevelt, 1942 was the darkest hour of the war. He knew the Germans were developing the atomic bomb. Our victories would be meaningless if the Nazis perfected the “A” bomb first. There was only one man who could find out the biggest Nazi secret of the war: Lanny Budd.

Paris, 1938. A shadow edges over Europe, while in Spain the war has already begun. Cristián Ferrar, a handsome Spanish lawyer in Paris, is approached to help a clandestine agency supply weapons to beleaguered Republican forces and agrees, putting his life on the line. Joining Ferrar is an unlikely group of allies: including Max de Lyon, a man hunted by the Gestapo, and the Marquesa Maria Cristina, a refined beauty with a taste for danger.

The Irish played a huge role in the American Revolution, not just on the battlefield but also in the field hospitals and in the framing of the Declaration of Independence. Niall O'Dowd, author of Lincoln and the Irish and A New Ireland, takes listeners on a journey into the unexplored contributions of the Irish in the American Revolution and behind the scenes of the relationships of some of those men and women with the first president of the United States.

If you're a fan of the Addison Holmes Mystery Series, you're going to love The Scarlet Chronicles! General Patton has nothing on Scarlet Holmes. She's beautiful, savvy, and smart, and if anyone can take down the Nazi's single-handedly, it's her.

In 1945, both the U.S. State Department and U.S. Intelligence saw Czechoslovakia as the master key to the balance of power in Europe and as a chessboard for the power-game between East and West. Washington believed that the political scene in Prague was the best available indicator of whether the United States would be able to coexist with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.

In 1949 Noor Inayat Khan was awarded the George Cross posthumously. How did this young lady from a noble upbringing with a pacifist belief have the desire, dedication, and willingness to risk everything to become one of the bravest and courageous agents during World War II? Starting her career with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, Noor soon wanted to make more of an impact on the war effort. This, combined with her incredible willpower and determination were soon noticed and she was recruited as a Special Operations Executive.

At the center of this fiercely compelling story is Devlin Judge, an American lawyer in Europe as part of the International Military Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals. Haunted by his own demons, Judge has a secret agenda: to find Erich Seyss, the Nazi responsible for his brother's death. An elite member of Hilter's SS and former Olympic sprinter known as "The White Lion", Seyss has just escaped from an American P.O.W. camp.

The Black Door explores the evolving relationship between successive British Prime Ministers and the intelligence agencies, from Asquith's Secret Service Bureau to Cameron's National Security Council. At the beginning of the 20th Century the British intelligence system was underfunded and lacked influence in government. But as the new millennium dawned, intelligence had become so integral to policy that it was used to make the case for war.

A spy is dead. A legend is born. This is how it all began. The explosive prequel to Casino Royale, from best-selling author Anthony Horowitz. Forever and a Day is the story of the birth of a legend, in the brutal underworld of the French Riviera, taking listeners into the very beginning of James Bond’s illustrious career and the formation of his identity.

In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was fighting. Believing that Britain was locked in an existential battle, Winston Churchill had already created a secret agency, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshoot­ing. Their job, he declared, was to 'set Europe ablaze'. But with most men on the front lines, the SOE was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.

In a Europe fractured by a flu pandemic and crippled by economic collapse, the continent has fractured into a hundred tiny principalities of ever-shifting loyalties, borders and covert operations. For Carey Tews, a former operative with Les Coureurs des Bois—a clandestine organisation of high-risk smugglers—Europe and the coureurs are in her past. Her legend in Hungary is blown six way from Sunday, and even if she could go back to working in Europe, she wouldn't. That is until an old friend and lover is declared dead in mysterious circumstances.

Scientists have always kept secrets. But rarely in history have scientific secrets been as vital as they were during World War II. In the midst of planning the Manhattan Project, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services created a secret offshoot - the Alsos Mission - meant to gather intelligence on and sabotage if necessary, scientific research by the Axis powers. What resulted was a plot worthy of the finest thriller, full of spies, sabotage and murder.

The Traitors Circle tells the true, but scarcely known, story of a group of secret rebels against Hitler. Drawn from Berlin high society, they include army officers, government officials, two countesses, an ambassador's widow and a former model—meeting in the shadows, whether hiding and rescuing Jews or plotting for a Germany freed from Nazi rule. One day in September 1943 they gather for a tea party—unaware that one among them is about to betray them all to the Gestapo. But who is the betrayer of a circle themselves branded “traitors” by the cruelest regime in history?

The pope is dead. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican to select his replacement, but one has fled for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the fourth century and Constantine the Great. Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone is in Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that could rewrite history. But someone else is after the same letters, and when Malone obtains and then loses them, he's plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the legendary Knights of Malta.

Artemis leaves the remote Greek island she grew up on to start a shiny new life in 1990s London with her British husband, a successful entrepreneur. Finally, she has escaped the ghosts of her past. Until she is found hanging from the stairs of her beautiful family home. Two decades later, the apparent suicide of an heiress uncannily mirrors Artemis’ mysterious death. And when the ensuing investigation uncovers links to a criminal cartel, National Crime Agency officer Madeleine Farrow begins to pull apart the web of deceit surrounding the two women.