Ben MacIntyre

Ben Macintyre was always interested in history, especially the two World Wars. Born in England in 1963, Macintyre, like every English person at that time, was profoundly affected by the wars. Everyone had a relative who fought or died. During that dark period, there were many heroes and villains. Inspired by these stories, Macintyre wrote volumes about those same heroes and villains, and concluded that, like us, they are all fallible, and caught in an untenable situation. Like some of the spies he would write about, Macintyre attended Cambridge and was "tapped-up," but his recruiters quickly realized that he wasn't spy material, so he headed into journalism. In 1992 he joined The Times as a New York Correspondent. The same year, he published his first book, Forgotten Fatherland. The story is about Macintyre and his search for the abandoned "Nueva Germania" that Friedrich Nietzsche's sister established in Paraguay. After the colony failed (although some colonists remained), Elizabeth returned to Germany and cared for her incapacitated brother and his work by, after his death, perverting his writings to suit the Nazi cause. The book was met with generally positive reviews and some success. As he was climbing the ladder at The Times, becoming Paris Bureau Chief, then US Editor, based in Washington, Macintyre continued to produce books. In 1997, he made one of his forays outside of the World Wars with The Napoleon of Crime. The tale of Adam Worth, master thief, who used his ill gotten gains to buy his way into high society, so he could steal more easily, Macintyre's storytelling and Worth's daring and charm proved to be a great match. In 2001, The Englishman's Daughter was published to much acclaim and robust sales. Especially in the U.K., readers flocked to the story of the heroic British airmen trapped for two years behind enemy lines in a French village, becoming part of the village, falling in love, and having children, only to be betrayed then assassinated by German soldiers. In 2002, Macintyre returned to the UK as parliamentary sketch-writer for The Times, later becoming editor of The Times Weekend Review, a weekly supplement covering the arts and literature, then as Associate Editor and columnist. In 2004, The Man Who Would Be King was another departure from the 20th Century, telling the story of Josiah Harlan, the first American to enter Afghanistan, in 1838, eventually becoming commander in chief of the Afghan armies. Macintyre returned to more familiar venues with his next streak of non-fiction. Agent Zigzag (2007), For Your Eyes Only (2008), Operation Mincemeat (2010), Double Cross (2012), and A Spy Among Friends (2014) all tell stories of British subterfuge and betrayal during World War II; all were best sellers in both Britain and North America. By the time of For Your Eyes Only (largely a biography of author/spy, Ian Fleming, and the genesis of Fleming's James Bond) was published, Macintyre was established as an authority on espionage during and after World War II. 2008 also marked Macintyre's initiation into the world of TV documentaries. The massive interest generated by Fleming's centenary celebration in 2008 in England put the author directly in the spotlight, on screen, as the authority on the subject. Two years later, a filmed version of Operation Mincemeat aired concurrently with the book's release. In 2011, "Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story" (BBC) told the same story as Agent Zigzag. The book release of Double Cross was also accompanied by a documentary, and A Spy Among Friends, about Kim Philby, the most infamous spy of them all, was accompanied by a two part BBC special in 2014.