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My Family And Other Spies
367 pages, Paperback
Published March 26, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 5, 2025
An intriguing true story about a family who all worked for SIS. Told by his son,this is the story of the enigmatic John Wood who worked for the SIS and UN from the 1930s through to reasonably recent times. John Wood was a polyglot, a radio expert, a weirdly detached womaniser a Sufi and a consummate liar. Fascinating story moving from WW2 South America, post WW2 Berlin and Austria to Vietnam to Cambodia to many African hotspots….. John Wood was and will probably always be an enigma? This is a very dense book and needs careful reading. Scarcely believable.
August 24, 2025
Extraordinary story. Can it really be true? Maybe the son is more like the father after all !
September 24, 2026
The author relates the life of his duplicitous father JBW who was born in England, lived all over the world as a child, claimed to be Norwegian while at Cambridge, was a Sufi disciple, was recruited to work with SIS in the Americas and then with MI6 in Europe post-WWII before being kicked out on suspicions of being a double agent and moving into a life of UN roles all over the globe.
The very first couple of chapters of this were the best part of the book with the author relating his own unusual upbringing on a military base in England with his mother working for MI6 and father only making brief appearances in his life. The rest of the book follows his father around the globe in his string of unusual lies (usually about his citizenship, but also about his relationship with his children...claiming they were nieces or sons of friends), inability to keep a steady relationship, his surprising relationship with Sufi movements in Europe and the Americas, and how his untrustworthiness came back to haunt him in several aspects. You would think a bio of a spy and borderline conman would be fascinating, but I had to work to get through this and used it mostly as something to put me to sleep at night because...well, it was boring. I think it was the manner in which this was presented as telling instead of showing, but I think part of that is due to the fact that the author had minimal facts to go on and was just piecing his father's life together from the little bits of factual information he did have to go on. Which was also just plain sad.
Notes on content:
Language: I don't remember any.
Sexual content: A couple mentions that couples engaged in activity. Nothing explicit, but some oversharing involved that would earn at least a PG-13.
Violence: Deaths in wars and covert actions that resulted in injuries are related. A fatal car crash is related. Cancer and old age are listed as causes of deaths for some of the people introduced.
Ethnic diversity: JBW worked all over the world so there are people from every continent but Antarctica introduced.
LGBTQ+ content: I believe there was one person mentioned who was an acquaintance and was gay.
Other: JBW cheated on several wives and girlfriends and abandoned more than one family with children.
The very first couple of chapters of this were the best part of the book with the author relating his own unusual upbringing on a military base in England with his mother working for MI6 and father only making brief appearances in his life. The rest of the book follows his father around the globe in his string of unusual lies (usually about his citizenship, but also about his relationship with his children...claiming they were nieces or sons of friends), inability to keep a steady relationship, his surprising relationship with Sufi movements in Europe and the Americas, and how his untrustworthiness came back to haunt him in several aspects. You would think a bio of a spy and borderline conman would be fascinating, but I had to work to get through this and used it mostly as something to put me to sleep at night because...well, it was boring. I think it was the manner in which this was presented as telling instead of showing, but I think part of that is due to the fact that the author had minimal facts to go on and was just piecing his father's life together from the little bits of factual information he did have to go on. Which was also just plain sad.
Notes on content:
Language: I don't remember any.
Sexual content: A couple mentions that couples engaged in activity. Nothing explicit, but some oversharing involved that would earn at least a PG-13.
Violence: Deaths in wars and covert actions that resulted in injuries are related. A fatal car crash is related. Cancer and old age are listed as causes of deaths for some of the people introduced.
Ethnic diversity: JBW worked all over the world so there are people from every continent but Antarctica introduced.
LGBTQ+ content: I believe there was one person mentioned who was an acquaintance and was gay.
Other: JBW cheated on several wives and girlfriends and abandoned more than one family with children.
July 1, 2026
From the 1930's to 1990's JBW (Wood's father) worked for various secret agencies, organisations, universities and aid projects across the globe. His mother was also similarly employed by SIS (as was his Aunt) and young Wood spent his formative years living with his mother and stepfather in a 'spycamp'.
This story is Wood's attempt to piece together the extraordinairy life of his absent father. The constant travelling, half truths, blatant lies, dangerous missions and neglect of his four children is painstakingly researched.
The difficulty in finding records, speaking with contemporaries, locating sources and digging through archives must have made this project rather daunting. Wood's is able to glean much from personal encounters and letters but it is clear that there is much he couldn't discover. With my own ancestors being great fans of burning correspondence and writing very little of note in diaries, I sympathise!
It's commendable that Wood often writes his family story with humour, as personally I think I'd be far less forgiving. JBW didn't often feature in the lives of his family (his long suffering mother put up with a lot!) and he didn't contribute much financially or emotionally to the lives of any of his children. His lies about his daughter's must be especially painful to discover.
JBW is an enigmatic character and Wood struggles to pin down his father's mindset in terms of why he continued working in far flung countries despite having two families that needed him. JBW's blasé attitude and repeated phrase in correspondence of having 'no ties' must have been difficult for the author to read.
This isn't an easy story to read and I struggled to retain interest around the middle. I enjoyed the family story aspects at the beginning and end but didn't particularly enjoy the parts of the story where Wood's mother and other family members aren't mentioned. It's an engaging and eye opening story but, you have to be interested in the period 1930-1960 for the middle portion of the story to hold your interest.
This story is Wood's attempt to piece together the extraordinairy life of his absent father. The constant travelling, half truths, blatant lies, dangerous missions and neglect of his four children is painstakingly researched.
The difficulty in finding records, speaking with contemporaries, locating sources and digging through archives must have made this project rather daunting. Wood's is able to glean much from personal encounters and letters but it is clear that there is much he couldn't discover. With my own ancestors being great fans of burning correspondence and writing very little of note in diaries, I sympathise!
It's commendable that Wood often writes his family story with humour, as personally I think I'd be far less forgiving. JBW didn't often feature in the lives of his family (his long suffering mother put up with a lot!) and he didn't contribute much financially or emotionally to the lives of any of his children. His lies about his daughter's must be especially painful to discover.
JBW is an enigmatic character and Wood struggles to pin down his father's mindset in terms of why he continued working in far flung countries despite having two families that needed him. JBW's blasé attitude and repeated phrase in correspondence of having 'no ties' must have been difficult for the author to read.
This isn't an easy story to read and I struggled to retain interest around the middle. I enjoyed the family story aspects at the beginning and end but didn't particularly enjoy the parts of the story where Wood's mother and other family members aren't mentioned. It's an engaging and eye opening story but, you have to be interested in the period 1930-1960 for the middle portion of the story to hold your interest.
June 15, 2026
First off, I am not allowed to review the edition I have sitting by my side because Goodreads says it is not published yet and I have to go through some procedure to swear that I have an advance copy. But I do not have an advance copy. I have a copy I bought recently from Amazon, published by Penguin. So here's the cover of the edition that I do not own and I am not allowed to show the cover of the edition that I do own.
Second, I didn't like the edition that I do own. I only got to page 30 and just getting that far was hard work. I never seemed to understand what Wood was saying and had to keep looking back to see if there was something that would help. There wasn't. It felt like I was reading a book that was partly in English and partly in some other language that I didn't know.
It's a shame, because I rarely find a non-fiction spy book that I don't like.
Second, I didn't like the edition that I do own. I only got to page 30 and just getting that far was hard work. I never seemed to understand what Wood was saying and had to keep looking back to see if there was something that would help. There wasn't. It felt like I was reading a book that was partly in English and partly in some other language that I didn't know.
It's a shame, because I rarely find a non-fiction spy book that I don't like.
August 16, 2026
Extraordinary true story written by Alistair Wood detailing his upbringing as the child of a pair of British Intelligence spies though his father effectively deserted his family, only occasionally reappearing in their lives, once memorably to kidnap the authors older brother. His mother, once she’d tracked them down, put skills honed in post war Berlin, to good use, and stole his brother back. His father went on to have two more wives’ and another family while forging a career as an academic and working for the UN: his mother rejoining M16 and the boys were raised in a training camp based in a fort on the southcoast. It would make a very entertaining film !
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews