A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

Agent Zigzag

The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy

One December night in 1942, a Nazi parachutist landed in a Cambridgeshire field. His mission: to sabotage the British war effort. His name was Eddie Chapman, but he would shortly become MI5’s Agent Zigzag. Dashing and louche, courageous and unpredictable, inside the traitor was a hero, inside the villain, a man of conscience: the problem for Chapman, his many lovers and his spymasters, was knowing where one ended and the other began. Ben Macintyre weaves together diaries, letters, photographs, memories and top-secret MI5 files to create the exhilarating account of Britain’s most sensational double agent.

‘As engrossing as any thriller and more improbable than most’

Daily Telegraph

‘For anyone interested in the Second World War, spying, romance, skullduggery or the hidden chambers of the human mind, it would be impossible to recommend it too highly’

Book of the Week, Mail on Sunday

‘Superb’

John le Carré