Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
The Happy Traitor
- Narrated by: Kevin Spink
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
99p for the first 3 months
The Happy Traitor
Buy Now for £22.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
Summary
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.
Critic reviews
"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)
More from the same
Author
What listeners say about The Happy Traitor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall3 out of 5 stars
-
Performance1 out of 5 stars
-
Story3 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 13-05-22
Pronunication...
I don't often review audio versions of books but due to time spent travelling I'm now listening to books more often. Usually I can enjoy the book and the narrator fades into the background, which is the ideal, or else they stand out as being excellent because of their range, bringing a story completely to life, which is even better. Occasionally a narrator stands out for the wrong reason and this is the case here.
It wouldn't have taken much to find out how to pronounce Dutch and German place names, or the very occasional word, Instead the pronunciations threw me out so much - I had to go back to the Kindle when I got home to actually check that 'Staatssicherheitsdienst' was actually in there and not something that sounded nothing like it. It's challenging, fair enough, but you only have to hear someone say it three or four times and practice a bit. And 'Sinterklaas' isn't 'sinkter class', Sorry to sound pedantic, but it's things like this that make all the difference to the enjoyment of listening.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars
-
Performance3 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- A. D. Bentley
- 13-07-21
Fascinating
An extraordinarily fascinating story. Never boring.
Sadly it was written from a non-Communist western perspective and it would have been better had this not been evident.
The narration had a fair amount of horrendous mispronunciations.
All in all, a gripping book and story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful