Wordfest Presents Ben Macintyre

Hosted by Shelley Youngblut

Wordfest is delighted to present Ben Macintyre, master of the spy genre, and his newest blockbuster, The Siege: A Six Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World. The sure-to-be compelling conversation, hosted by Wordfest's Shelley Youngblut, includes an audience Q & A and book signing, fuelled by Owl’s Nest Books, who will also have copies of Macintyre’s impressive backlist on hand (order in advance here). 

We are grateful to Penguin Random House Canada for making it possible to connect you with Ben Macintyre.

About The Siege

A brilliant, seat-of-your-pants hostage-taking and daring SAS rescue mission of the Iran Embassy in London in 1980, this is Ben Macintyre at the very height of his story-telling powers.

On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Prince’s Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There, they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensued – all on television, over a Bank Holiday weekend – in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

This mission marked a fundamental turning point in global history, when Middle Eastern terrorism arrived in the West. Britain had experienced IRA terrorism before, but never an international terrorist incident on this scale. It was a precursor to the brutal Iran-Iraq War that would follow, in which millions perished. Yet there exists to this day no full account of the week-long siege and gripping rescue.

Drawing on interviews with police, hostages, terrorists and key SAS figures, and cutting through the sensationalism and misinformation, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre (author of Sunday Times #1s Colditz, The Spy and the Traitor and SAS: Rogue Heroes) goes deep into the archives with exclusive access to tell the story of what really happened and give the first definitive account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS – and itself.

About Ben Macintyre

Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (U.K.) and the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.

About Host Shelley Youngblut

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. She was also a former pop-culture correspondent for ABC World News Now and Canada AM. Follow her on Facebook @ShelleyYoungblut and Instagram/Threads @youngblutshelley.

Be Curiouser

• Ben Macintyre on why you should read The Siege. –YouTube
• A Spy Among Friends review: Don't Take Your Eyes off This Star-Packed Espionage Thriller. –The Guardian
• A Double Portrait of Two of the Cold War's Most Successful Double Agents. –The New York Times

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