America. Russia. Iran. Secret plots. Imperialist ambition. Nuclear destruction. This story could be pulled from today’s headlines but it’s actually 1981. Only Ben Macintyre could uncover the secrets behind the Soviet double agent struggling to prevent Cold War Armageddon. Wordfest is thrilled to welcome Macintyre back to Calgary to share the fascinating tale behind Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy.
The conversation, hosted by Wordfest’s Shelley Youngblut, includes an audience Q & A and book signing, fuelled by Owl’s Nest Books. You can preorder copies of Redwood, as well as Macintyre’s award-winning back list, here.
Shelley Youngblut
Fascinating Conversation
Libations Bar, with non-alcoholic options
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission
Ben Macintyre is the multimillion-copy bestselling author of books including Prisoners of the Castle, The Spy and the Traitor, Rogue Heroes, Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat, and A Spy Among Friends. His last Calgary appearance was in 2024, for The Siege, the definitive history of the Iranian Embassy siege in London in 1980.
He is a columnist and Associate Editor at The Times (UK) and has worked as the newspaper’s correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. Several of his books have been made into films and television series, and Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.
From the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor (“John le Carré’s nonfiction counterpart”—The New York Times) comes the ultimate true-life Cold War thriller: the story of a Russian double agent with a terrible secret—and the key to stopping a nuclear apocalypse.
The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response contemplated in the secret chambers of American power—unknown to the public—would be to strike with nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how, at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of American and British governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot, and prevented Armageddon.
“Redwood” was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto-unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly trained, six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets, compelled to swap sides by a shaming secret of his own. Facing exposure, with both the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and his own KGB colleagues closing in, he demanded that MI6 try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan.
This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications.
Drawing on never-before-seen material from archives in multiple countries, and interviews with the participants including officers from MI6 and MI5, the KGB and CIA, Redwood plunges readers back into the shadowy world of The Spy and the Traitor. It lifts the lid on an unknown and highly significant Cold War victory, on the machinations of history’s Great Game, and on how espionage really works.
Without Redwood, our world would be very different—and might not exist at all.
Shelley Youngblut
Fascinating Conversation
Libations Bar, with non-alcoholic options
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission
Shelley Youngblut is the CEO & Creative Ringleader of Wordfest. She was the recipient of the 2020 Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts and the 2018 Rozsa Award for Arts Leadership. She also won the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Western Magazine Awards. Youngblut was the founding editor of Calgary’s award-winning Swerve magazine and has created magazines for ESPN, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Nickelodeon, Western Living, and The Globe and Mail. A former pop-culture correspondent for ABC World News Now and Canada AM, she was also a frequent contributor to CBC Calgary’s The Eyeopener, The Homestretch, and Daybreak Alberta.
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