Ben Macintyre

Ben Macintyre

Ben Macintyre is an associate editor, columnist and writer at large for The Times (U.K.). He is the bestselling author of 12 books of non-fiction, including The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.

Website: benmacintyre.com
Twitter: @benmacintyre1

 There is nobody to beat Ben Macintyre for a knowledge of espionage.” –Alexander McCall Smith

FESTIVAL BOOK

Prisoners of the Castle

<strong>The definitive and surprising true story of one of history’s most notorious prisons – and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their captors, from the <em>New York Times </em>bestselling author of <em>The Spy and the Traitor.</em></strong>

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names – like the indomitable Pat Reid – share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.

Prisoners of the Castle traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed <em>Operation Mincemeat</em> and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.
<h2><strong>GET THE BOOK</strong></h2>
<a href="https://shop.owlsnestbooks.com/item/zb7C99cVE0ykzDoNWw1s8g">Owl’s Nest Books</a> (Calgary) | <a href="https://calgary.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S95C1480230">Calgary Public Library</a>
<h2><strong>BE CURIOUSER</strong></h2>
<ul>
<li>Riveting: This is another engrossing tale of WWII intrigue from a master of the genre. <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-593-13633-1">-<strong><em>Publishers Weekly</em></strong></a></li>
<li>Author Ben Macintyre explores the truth behind one of the most famous double agents in modern history: Harold Kim Philby. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040bnsl">-BBC Two</a></li>
<li>Damien Lewis &amp; Guy Pearce in A Spy Among Friends (premiering in 2022). <a href="https://variety.com/2021/streaming/global/damian-lewis-guy-pearce-first-look-a-spy-among-friends-1235102757/">-Variety</a></li>
<li>Watch Operation Mincemeat. <a href="https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/81428563">-Netflix</a></li>
<li>Spies Like Us: A Conversation with John Le Carré and Ben Macintyre. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/books/review/john-le-carre-ben-macintyre-british-spy-thrillers.html">-The New York Times</a></li>
</ul>

ALL EVENTS WITH Ben Macintyre

7 PM
An Evening with Ben Macintyre
Oct 05 @ 7 PM MT - 8:15 PM MT

DJD Dance Centre

111 12 Ave SE