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Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy
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.
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.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2026
About the author
Ben Macintyre
41 books4,764 followersBen 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.
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Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Quite simply, if Ben Macintyre's name is on the book, I am going to love it. Redwood is no different. In telling the story of a KGB agent who decides to switch sides, Macintyre has once again found a tale that is not well-known, but has such far-reaching effects that I am thoroughly confused how I didn't hear about this before. Redwood is no ordinary spy. He was well placed in the KGB to have mountains of intelligence which could change the tide in post-revolution Iran.
What I love about Macintyre's books is that he knows full well that the human story is always the most important part of the narrative. However, you still need to build out the world around him. You can't understand the pressure Redwood is under unless you know what his defection would mean. I have read plenty of books that promise little-known stories where the main character "changed the world." When it comes to Redwood, this is not hyperbole.
Macintyre has to thread the needle of making you care about Redwood while also understanding the complexity of post-Revolution Iran. I can't even begin to explain how bewildering this time and place in history was. You have the supporters of the exiled shah, the ayatollah (who at this point was trying to pretend he wasn't a total despot), the communists, and then everyone else. The U.S. is no longer in country, but the U.K. is and it becomes important how they are able to be there. I haven't even scratched the surface, but luckily I didn't write this book.
Special attention should be paid to the fact that Macintyre is hilarious. There are small asides now and again with winking commentary to relieve the pressure of everything else going on. It adds another touch of humanity to recognize the humor in even the darkest times of humanity. This story could not have been told better.
(This book was provided as an advanced reader copy by Crown Publishing.)
What I love about Macintyre's books is that he knows full well that the human story is always the most important part of the narrative. However, you still need to build out the world around him. You can't understand the pressure Redwood is under unless you know what his defection would mean. I have read plenty of books that promise little-known stories where the main character "changed the world." When it comes to Redwood, this is not hyperbole.
Macintyre has to thread the needle of making you care about Redwood while also understanding the complexity of post-Revolution Iran. I can't even begin to explain how bewildering this time and place in history was. You have the supporters of the exiled shah, the ayatollah (who at this point was trying to pretend he wasn't a total despot), the communists, and then everyone else. The U.S. is no longer in country, but the U.K. is and it becomes important how they are able to be there. I haven't even scratched the surface, but luckily I didn't write this book.
Special attention should be paid to the fact that Macintyre is hilarious. There are small asides now and again with winking commentary to relieve the pressure of everything else going on. It adds another touch of humanity to recognize the humor in even the darkest times of humanity. This story could not have been told better.
(This book was provided as an advanced reader copy by Crown Publishing.)
September 21, 2026
Ben Macintyre has spent two decades turning intelligence files into page-turners, and he usually starts with a spy the public half knows. Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre starts with one almost nobody remembers. Vladimir Kuzichkin was a KGB major working under diplomatic cover in Tehran, and in 1981, in the middle of the Islamic Revolution's most paranoid years, he walked into the British mission and offered to betray everything he knew. The book is about why he did it, how one young MI6 officer kept him alive, and what the West did with his secrets afterwards.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War, in Brief
Kuzichkin belonged to Directorate S, the arm of the KGB that ran "illegals", Soviet agents living abroad under false identities. He arrived in Tehran in 1977 with his wife Galina, watched the Shah fall, and spent the next four years inside a Soviet station that was corrupt, drunk and increasingly busy with a dangerous project: backing Iran's communist party, the Tudeh, as it quietly placed its people inside the new Islamic state.
The man he chose to trust was Ian McCredie, the only MI6 officer left in Tehran after the revolution, working under commercial cover in a skeleton British mission. Their meetings took place in a bathroom in the embassy compound with the taps running to defeat the bugs. MI6 gave the source a codename, REDWOOD, and a tall tree was only one of its meanings.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre follows the operation from that first approach to a hair-raising exit overland into Turkey, then keeps going, into the years when his information reached people who were never meant to have it.
How Macintyre Builds the Book
The structure is a slow fuse. Macintyre spends a long opening stretch on Kuzichkin's hard Moscow childhood, McCredie's apprenticeship, and the chaos of Tehran from the fall of the Shah to the American hostage crisis. It pays off. By the time the two men meet, you understand why a KGB officer might loathe his own service and why a British spy might risk his career on a stranger.
Then the book accelerates. The middle chapters are Macintyre at his best: dead drops, a miniature camera, a cipher machine older than most of the staff, the constant risk of Iranian surveillance and Soviet suspicion. McCredie's cooperation, and interviews with most of the MI6 officers involved, give these scenes a close texture that his earlier books sometimes had to reconstruct from paper alone. He is candid that MI6 did not authorize or vet the book and that its files remain closed.
What Works
The pairing. Kuzichkin and McCredie are an odd couple worth a novel of their own: the moody, funny, tarot-reading Russian and the careful Englishman who became his closest friend.
The motive. Macintyre is frank that part of what pushed Kuzichkin was private, a case of impotence he believed Western medicine could cure, and handles it without smirking.
The comedy. A walk-in who mistakes a diplomat for the head of MI6, iron tablets sent by MI6's chief doctor as a hopeful placebo, a codename with an accidental pun. The tone stays light until it cannot.
The scope. In Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre, one man's defection touches Afghanistan, a Canadian police mole, a Swiss spy trial and the future of Iran.
The Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy?
The subtitle makes a big claim, and the book mostly earns it, though not in the way you expect. Kuzichkin's value was less about stolen documents than what he knew about Soviet plans in Iran: the KGB's hopes for the Tudeh, and the party's people inside the armed forces, including the commander of the navy.
What makes Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre more than a caper is its portrait of the man. Kuzichkin is brave, vain, self-pitying and warm by turns, a KGB believer turned bitter enemy who never stops missing home. The book's final section follows him into a new name and a new trade in England, and those pages are among the saddest Macintyre has written.
The Untold Story Behind the Cold War's Most Uncomfortable Bargain
Here is where the book turns. Months after the defection, British and American intelligence shared the substance of Kuzichkin's material with the Ayatollah's government, in a meeting brokered by Pakistan. The Islamic Republic used it to destroy the Tudeh. Party leaders were tortured into televised confessions, Soviet diplomats were expelled, and thousands of Iranian leftists were arrested, and many later killed. For more on the party itself, the Tudeh Party's history is a useful primer.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre refuses to settle the argument. A Soviet-backed coup may have been prevented. A brutal theocracy was also strengthened. Macintyre lays out both and leaves the discomfort with the reader.
Where It Falls Short
The long run-up. The revolution and hostage chapters are well done but familiar, and the spy is slow to arrive.
The British angle dominates. With McCredie as the main living source, the Iranian victims appear mainly as consequences, although a Tudeh prisoner's testimony is harrowing.
The counterfactuals. A late passage on how history might have gone differently feels like a flourish too many.
Read It If / Skip It If
Pick up Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre if you loved The Spy and the Traitor, want a spy story with moral weight, or are curious about how Iran's revolution looked from inside its foreign embassies. Skip it if you want a tight thriller pace from page one, or a history told mainly from Iranian sources.
Content Notes
Content notes: descriptions of torture and forced confessions, executions and mass political killings, childhood domestic violence, alcoholism, suicide, the savage beating of a CIA officer, and frank discussion of sexual dysfunction.
Worth Your Shelf
The image I keep returning to is the bathroom: two men from rival empires crouched beside a running tap, trading secrets and jokes while revolutionary Tehran rages outside. Macintyre builds an entire moral history out of that small room, and then shows how far its consequences travelled.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre is slow to start and more British in its sympathies than the story strictly deserves. But it is absorbing, humane and brave enough to admit that a great intelligence success can also be a catastrophe. Four and a half stars, and Macintyre's strongest book in years.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War, in Brief
Kuzichkin belonged to Directorate S, the arm of the KGB that ran "illegals", Soviet agents living abroad under false identities. He arrived in Tehran in 1977 with his wife Galina, watched the Shah fall, and spent the next four years inside a Soviet station that was corrupt, drunk and increasingly busy with a dangerous project: backing Iran's communist party, the Tudeh, as it quietly placed its people inside the new Islamic state.
The man he chose to trust was Ian McCredie, the only MI6 officer left in Tehran after the revolution, working under commercial cover in a skeleton British mission. Their meetings took place in a bathroom in the embassy compound with the taps running to defeat the bugs. MI6 gave the source a codename, REDWOOD, and a tall tree was only one of its meanings.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre follows the operation from that first approach to a hair-raising exit overland into Turkey, then keeps going, into the years when his information reached people who were never meant to have it.
How Macintyre Builds the Book
The structure is a slow fuse. Macintyre spends a long opening stretch on Kuzichkin's hard Moscow childhood, McCredie's apprenticeship, and the chaos of Tehran from the fall of the Shah to the American hostage crisis. It pays off. By the time the two men meet, you understand why a KGB officer might loathe his own service and why a British spy might risk his career on a stranger.
Then the book accelerates. The middle chapters are Macintyre at his best: dead drops, a miniature camera, a cipher machine older than most of the staff, the constant risk of Iranian surveillance and Soviet suspicion. McCredie's cooperation, and interviews with most of the MI6 officers involved, give these scenes a close texture that his earlier books sometimes had to reconstruct from paper alone. He is candid that MI6 did not authorize or vet the book and that its files remain closed.
What Works
The pairing. Kuzichkin and McCredie are an odd couple worth a novel of their own: the moody, funny, tarot-reading Russian and the careful Englishman who became his closest friend.
The motive. Macintyre is frank that part of what pushed Kuzichkin was private, a case of impotence he believed Western medicine could cure, and handles it without smirking.
The comedy. A walk-in who mistakes a diplomat for the head of MI6, iron tablets sent by MI6's chief doctor as a hopeful placebo, a codename with an accidental pun. The tone stays light until it cannot.
The scope. In Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre, one man's defection touches Afghanistan, a Canadian police mole, a Swiss spy trial and the future of Iran.
The Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy?
The subtitle makes a big claim, and the book mostly earns it, though not in the way you expect. Kuzichkin's value was less about stolen documents than what he knew about Soviet plans in Iran: the KGB's hopes for the Tudeh, and the party's people inside the armed forces, including the commander of the navy.
What makes Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre more than a caper is its portrait of the man. Kuzichkin is brave, vain, self-pitying and warm by turns, a KGB believer turned bitter enemy who never stops missing home. The book's final section follows him into a new name and a new trade in England, and those pages are among the saddest Macintyre has written.
The Untold Story Behind the Cold War's Most Uncomfortable Bargain
Here is where the book turns. Months after the defection, British and American intelligence shared the substance of Kuzichkin's material with the Ayatollah's government, in a meeting brokered by Pakistan. The Islamic Republic used it to destroy the Tudeh. Party leaders were tortured into televised confessions, Soviet diplomats were expelled, and thousands of Iranian leftists were arrested, and many later killed. For more on the party itself, the Tudeh Party's history is a useful primer.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre refuses to settle the argument. A Soviet-backed coup may have been prevented. A brutal theocracy was also strengthened. Macintyre lays out both and leaves the discomfort with the reader.
Where It Falls Short
The long run-up. The revolution and hostage chapters are well done but familiar, and the spy is slow to arrive.
The British angle dominates. With McCredie as the main living source, the Iranian victims appear mainly as consequences, although a Tudeh prisoner's testimony is harrowing.
The counterfactuals. A late passage on how history might have gone differently feels like a flourish too many.
Read It If / Skip It If
Pick up Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre if you loved The Spy and the Traitor, want a spy story with moral weight, or are curious about how Iran's revolution looked from inside its foreign embassies. Skip it if you want a tight thriller pace from page one, or a history told mainly from Iranian sources.
Content Notes
Content notes: descriptions of torture and forced confessions, executions and mass political killings, childhood domestic violence, alcoholism, suicide, the savage beating of a CIA officer, and frank discussion of sexual dysfunction.
Worth Your Shelf
The image I keep returning to is the bathroom: two men from rival empires crouched beside a running tap, trading secrets and jokes while revolutionary Tehran rages outside. Macintyre builds an entire moral history out of that small room, and then shows how far its consequences travelled.
Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy by Ben Macintyre is slow to start and more British in its sympathies than the story strictly deserves. But it is absorbing, humane and brave enough to admit that a great intelligence success can also be a catastrophe. Four and a half stars, and Macintyre's strongest book in years.
September 20, 2026
The best historical spy book I have read to date, there is so much content that was new and frankly surprising that once I picked up the book, I simply couldn't put it down. Highly recommendable for anyone with an interest in geopolitics, history or government. Contains everything from selection, training, vetting, operations to company cultures and the psychological impact of carrying out the job. Notably, it offers an insight to the relative strength of the countries where operatives were deployed and strategic planning by major powers in the Cold War continuation of the Great Game. Ben Macintyre has built a formidable reputation for turning the shadowy world of espionage into compelling, accessible history. In Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy, he delivers another gripping account of deception, betrayal, courage and political intrigue. But this time, the story has an especially extraordinary twist: one of the most consequential intelligence operations of the Cold War may have been set in motion by a man's deeply personal and embarrassing medical problem. At the centre of the book is Vladimir Kuzichkin, a KGB major stationed in Tehran in the turbulent aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. A highly trained intelligence officer, fluent in Persian and familiar with Iranian politics, Kuzichkin was ideally placed to understand Soviet ambitions in the region. Yet beneath his professional exterior lay a troubled man, increasingly disillusioned with the corruption, incompetence and hypocrisy of the organisation he served. His eventual decision to approach British intelligence was driven by a combination of dissatisfaction and an intensely personal predicament. Suffering from erectile dysfunction, he believed that Western medicine offered a solution unavailable to him in the Soviet Union. He was so anxious to obtain treatment that he was prepared to offer MI6 something extraordinary in return: the secrets of the KGB. It is an almost unbelievable beginning to a story with consequences extending far beyond the bedroom of one Soviet intelligence officer.
A spy story with extraordinary human motivations
One of Macintyre's greatest strengths is his ability to find the human story behind apparently monumental historical events. Kuzichkin is not presented as a glamorous, ideologically driven hero. He is an awkward, sometimes unhappy and increasingly frightened individual, whose personal circumstances collide with events of global significance. The medical problem that precipitates his defection provides the book with an almost comic opening. However, Macintyre is careful to show that Kuzichkin's motives were more complicated than a desperate search for medical treatment. His growing contempt for the KGB, his fear of professional disgrace and his dissatisfaction with Soviet life all contributed to his decision. The other central figure is Ian McCredie, the young MI6 officer who recruits and manages Kuzichkin. Their relationship provides the narrative with much of its emotional depth. Two men from opposing intelligence services develop a relationship founded on suspicion, necessity and, eventually, a degree of mutual trust. Their interactions also reveal the extraordinary improvisation involved in intelligence work. Macintyre excels at describing the practical realities of espionage. Meetings must be arranged without attracting attention; messages have to be concealed; surveillance must be detected; and even the simplest encounter can become potentially fatal. Brush contacts, dead-letter drops and elaborate counter-surveillance techniques are not merely colourful details. They demonstrate the constant psychological pressure experienced by people whose lives depend on remaining invisible. The result is a narrative that reads more like a thriller than a conventional history book, without losing its grounding in historical research.
The geopolitical consequences: a victory with a dark legacy
The real significance of Kuzichkin's intelligence becomes apparent when Macintyre turns to Soviet ambitions in Iran. Following the overthrow of the Shah, the Soviet Union saw an opportunity to extend its influence into a strategically important country bordering the USSR. Moscow was supporting the Iranian Tudeh Party, a communist organisation with connections inside the country's political and military institutions. Kuzichkin exposed the extent of Soviet intelligence activity and the relationship between Moscow and the Tudeh. His information gave British and American intelligence an unprecedented insight into Soviet intentions at a moment when Western governments feared that Iran might fall within the Soviet sphere of influence. But the consequences were considerably more complicated than a straightforward Western intelligence victory. When the information was passed to the Iranian authorities, the Islamic Republic used it to launch a devastating crackdown against the Tudeh Party. Its members and suspected sympathisers were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and executed. The destruction of the communist organisation eliminated a significant source of organised secular and left-wing opposition, helping to consolidate the authority of Ayatollah Khomeini's government. This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the book. An intelligence operation intended to protect Western interests and frustrate Soviet expansion ultimately helped strengthen an authoritarian theocratic regime. Macintyre raises uncomfortable questions about the morality of espionage. Intelligence agencies may regard information as a strategic asset, but they cannot always control how that information is subsequently used. The consequences can be devastating for people who have no involvement in the original operation. The distinction between winning an intelligence battle and achieving a desirable political outcome is one of Redwood's most important themes.
The price of living with secrets
Macintyre's account is also a study of the psychological cost of betrayal and the loneliness of a life lived under an assumed identity. Kuzichkin's escape to Britain did not provide the happy ending that might be expected from a conventional spy thriller. Although he had escaped the KGB and acquired a new identity, he remained haunted by his past and the consequences of the intelligence he had supplied. His later life was marked by isolation, drinking and psychological distress. The knowledge that his information had contributed to the destruction of the Tudeh Party weighed heavily on him. His story becomes a reminder that intelligence victories are often measured in strategic terms, while the personal consequences are borne by individuals who must live with their decisions. This is where Redwood moves beyond the familiar conventions of Cold War espionage. It is not simply about who deceived whom, or which intelligence service gained the advantage. It is about the human cost of decisions made in secrecy, often with incomplete knowledge and unpredictable consequences.
Macintyre's storytelling and historical approach
Macintyre's writing is characteristically entertaining, fast-paced and rich in revealing detail. He has an exceptional ability to explain complicated intelligence operations without overwhelming the reader with technical or historical information. His research, drawing on archival material and interviews with former intelligence personnel, gives the narrative considerable authority. The book also benefits from its dual focus on Kuzichkin and McCredie, allowing the reader to see events from both sides of the intelligence relationship. There is, however, an important question about the extent to which the book's central geopolitical argument can be accepted. The suggestion that Soviet-backed communists might have taken control of Iran, or that the absence of Kuzichkin's defection could have produced a dramatically different Cold War, is fascinating but necessarily speculative. The Tudeh Party was far from universally popular, and Iran's political and religious forces were already undergoing profound changes. This is an important qualification. The book is strongest when documenting what happened and exploring the consequences of actual decisions, rather than imagining what might have happened otherwise.
Final verdict
Redwood is an absorbing and thought-provoking work of historical non-fiction. It combines the excitement of a first-class espionage thriller with a serious examination of the political, moral and personal consequences of intelligence operations. What makes the story particularly memorable is the extraordinary contrast between its beginning and its ending. A KGB officer's deeply private medical predicament leads to one of the most remarkable intelligence defections of the Cold War. His revelations expose Soviet ambitions, influence the balance of power in the Middle East and contribute, indirectly, to the strengthening of the very Iranian regime that Western intelligence was struggling to understand. Yet the ultimate legacy is far from straightforward. What initially appears to be a remarkable Western intelligence success becomes a much more troubling story about unintended consequences, political expediency and human suffering. Macintyre reminds us that history is not always shaped by great ideological convictions or carefully calculated political strategies. Sometimes it turns on the insecurities, weaknesses and personal circumstances of quite ordinary human beings operating in extraordinary situations. Readers who enjoyed The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends or Operation Mincemeat will find much to admire here. Indeed, Redwood may be one of Macintyre's most unusual and revealing books. Highly recommended, particularly for readers interested in Cold War history, intelligence operations, Soviet politics and the modern history of Iran.
A spy story with extraordinary human motivations
One of Macintyre's greatest strengths is his ability to find the human story behind apparently monumental historical events. Kuzichkin is not presented as a glamorous, ideologically driven hero. He is an awkward, sometimes unhappy and increasingly frightened individual, whose personal circumstances collide with events of global significance. The medical problem that precipitates his defection provides the book with an almost comic opening. However, Macintyre is careful to show that Kuzichkin's motives were more complicated than a desperate search for medical treatment. His growing contempt for the KGB, his fear of professional disgrace and his dissatisfaction with Soviet life all contributed to his decision. The other central figure is Ian McCredie, the young MI6 officer who recruits and manages Kuzichkin. Their relationship provides the narrative with much of its emotional depth. Two men from opposing intelligence services develop a relationship founded on suspicion, necessity and, eventually, a degree of mutual trust. Their interactions also reveal the extraordinary improvisation involved in intelligence work. Macintyre excels at describing the practical realities of espionage. Meetings must be arranged without attracting attention; messages have to be concealed; surveillance must be detected; and even the simplest encounter can become potentially fatal. Brush contacts, dead-letter drops and elaborate counter-surveillance techniques are not merely colourful details. They demonstrate the constant psychological pressure experienced by people whose lives depend on remaining invisible. The result is a narrative that reads more like a thriller than a conventional history book, without losing its grounding in historical research.
The geopolitical consequences: a victory with a dark legacy
The real significance of Kuzichkin's intelligence becomes apparent when Macintyre turns to Soviet ambitions in Iran. Following the overthrow of the Shah, the Soviet Union saw an opportunity to extend its influence into a strategically important country bordering the USSR. Moscow was supporting the Iranian Tudeh Party, a communist organisation with connections inside the country's political and military institutions. Kuzichkin exposed the extent of Soviet intelligence activity and the relationship between Moscow and the Tudeh. His information gave British and American intelligence an unprecedented insight into Soviet intentions at a moment when Western governments feared that Iran might fall within the Soviet sphere of influence. But the consequences were considerably more complicated than a straightforward Western intelligence victory. When the information was passed to the Iranian authorities, the Islamic Republic used it to launch a devastating crackdown against the Tudeh Party. Its members and suspected sympathisers were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and executed. The destruction of the communist organisation eliminated a significant source of organised secular and left-wing opposition, helping to consolidate the authority of Ayatollah Khomeini's government. This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the book. An intelligence operation intended to protect Western interests and frustrate Soviet expansion ultimately helped strengthen an authoritarian theocratic regime. Macintyre raises uncomfortable questions about the morality of espionage. Intelligence agencies may regard information as a strategic asset, but they cannot always control how that information is subsequently used. The consequences can be devastating for people who have no involvement in the original operation. The distinction between winning an intelligence battle and achieving a desirable political outcome is one of Redwood's most important themes.
The price of living with secrets
Macintyre's account is also a study of the psychological cost of betrayal and the loneliness of a life lived under an assumed identity. Kuzichkin's escape to Britain did not provide the happy ending that might be expected from a conventional spy thriller. Although he had escaped the KGB and acquired a new identity, he remained haunted by his past and the consequences of the intelligence he had supplied. His later life was marked by isolation, drinking and psychological distress. The knowledge that his information had contributed to the destruction of the Tudeh Party weighed heavily on him. His story becomes a reminder that intelligence victories are often measured in strategic terms, while the personal consequences are borne by individuals who must live with their decisions. This is where Redwood moves beyond the familiar conventions of Cold War espionage. It is not simply about who deceived whom, or which intelligence service gained the advantage. It is about the human cost of decisions made in secrecy, often with incomplete knowledge and unpredictable consequences.
Macintyre's storytelling and historical approach
Macintyre's writing is characteristically entertaining, fast-paced and rich in revealing detail. He has an exceptional ability to explain complicated intelligence operations without overwhelming the reader with technical or historical information. His research, drawing on archival material and interviews with former intelligence personnel, gives the narrative considerable authority. The book also benefits from its dual focus on Kuzichkin and McCredie, allowing the reader to see events from both sides of the intelligence relationship. There is, however, an important question about the extent to which the book's central geopolitical argument can be accepted. The suggestion that Soviet-backed communists might have taken control of Iran, or that the absence of Kuzichkin's defection could have produced a dramatically different Cold War, is fascinating but necessarily speculative. The Tudeh Party was far from universally popular, and Iran's political and religious forces were already undergoing profound changes. This is an important qualification. The book is strongest when documenting what happened and exploring the consequences of actual decisions, rather than imagining what might have happened otherwise.
Final verdict
Redwood is an absorbing and thought-provoking work of historical non-fiction. It combines the excitement of a first-class espionage thriller with a serious examination of the political, moral and personal consequences of intelligence operations. What makes the story particularly memorable is the extraordinary contrast between its beginning and its ending. A KGB officer's deeply private medical predicament leads to one of the most remarkable intelligence defections of the Cold War. His revelations expose Soviet ambitions, influence the balance of power in the Middle East and contribute, indirectly, to the strengthening of the very Iranian regime that Western intelligence was struggling to understand. Yet the ultimate legacy is far from straightforward. What initially appears to be a remarkable Western intelligence success becomes a much more troubling story about unintended consequences, political expediency and human suffering. Macintyre reminds us that history is not always shaped by great ideological convictions or carefully calculated political strategies. Sometimes it turns on the insecurities, weaknesses and personal circumstances of quite ordinary human beings operating in extraordinary situations. Readers who enjoyed The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends or Operation Mincemeat will find much to admire here. Indeed, Redwood may be one of Macintyre's most unusual and revealing books. Highly recommended, particularly for readers interested in Cold War history, intelligence operations, Soviet politics and the modern history of Iran.
October 12, 2026
Thank you Crown for the free copy!
I love Ben Macintyre’s nonfiction writing style. REDWOOD is the second book I’ve read by him and he is skilled in making history come alive and jump off the pages. If you have an interest in learning about the Cold War, Iran, MI6, or the KGB, you should check this one out.
In 1981, after the Iranian Revolution, a KGB spy stationed in Iran offers to secretly help MI6. In return they will eventually smuggle him out of the country and get him treatment for his, uh, affliction. (And yes, I did not realize the triple entendre of his code name “Redwood” until the writer mentioned it.) Looks like we got a double agent situation going on unless it’s an elaborate setup by the Russians.
The story hooked me from the beginning and I did a double take when the motivation for Redwood betraying his country was revealed. There’s a thriller vibe throughout even though it’s a history read. I learned lots of surprising bits of info. Even though the events occurred decades ago it’s a relevant read in today’s political landscape.
Ben Macintyre is now on my autoread list. If he writes it, I’ll read it.
I love Ben Macintyre’s nonfiction writing style. REDWOOD is the second book I’ve read by him and he is skilled in making history come alive and jump off the pages. If you have an interest in learning about the Cold War, Iran, MI6, or the KGB, you should check this one out.
In 1981, after the Iranian Revolution, a KGB spy stationed in Iran offers to secretly help MI6. In return they will eventually smuggle him out of the country and get him treatment for his, uh, affliction. (And yes, I did not realize the triple entendre of his code name “Redwood” until the writer mentioned it.) Looks like we got a double agent situation going on unless it’s an elaborate setup by the Russians.
The story hooked me from the beginning and I did a double take when the motivation for Redwood betraying his country was revealed. There’s a thriller vibe throughout even though it’s a history read. I learned lots of surprising bits of info. Even though the events occurred decades ago it’s a relevant read in today’s political landscape.
Ben Macintyre is now on my autoread list. If he writes it, I’ll read it.
September 24, 2026
It is unbelievable how such a lie, "A Coup by the Tudeh Party in Iran after the 1979 Revolution," could be sold to MI6 and its agents. The fact that the chief MI6 agent inside Iran didn't know any names of Tudeh party members, apart from the head of the organisation, Kianouri, is revealing enough to highlight the deep problems with MI6's competency and that of its agents.
However, it is still unfathomable how such a ridiculous lie could still be uncritically narrated after 50 years, especially now that it is completely clear that the Tudeh party had less than one-tenth of the strength of the MEK, which was crushed by the Islamic regime a year before it attacked the Tudeh party. How could any sane person believe Tudeh could take over power in Tehran, where the MEK, a much more powerful and (at that time still) much more popular organisation, had been totally defeated and savagely prosecuted?
Any Soviet military intervention in Iran is also a sham and fabrication. Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan a while after a successful communist coup and takeover. They never initiated or facilitated the initial takeover of the power by the communists. The Afghans carried out that part. Thereafter, when the Soviets believed Amin's policies were harmful to their cause, they orchestrated a coup even though the communists were already in power.
The Indigenous Communist Takeover occurred in 1978, the Saur Revolution, in April 1978, when the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)—the local communist party—overthrew the government of President Mohammed Daoud Khan. Historical records show that the coup surprised the Soviet leadership. This whole part is not even mentioned in the book, while it is essential because it completely refutes the initial hypothesis that the Soviet Union would invade simultaneously to ensure a successful military coup in Iran. Because while Moscow had provided military and economic aid to Afghanistan for decades, they did not orchestrate, initiate, or facilitate this initial seizure of power.
Following the coup, the PDPA split into two hostile factions: the radical Khalq (Masses) faction led by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin and the more moderate Parcham (Banner) faction led by Babrak Karmel. When in September 1979, Hafizullah Amin seized sole power after a violent internal struggle that resulted in the assassination of Taraki, Amin pursued brutal, rapid modernisation and purging campaigns that triggered a massive, nationwide Islamist insurgency. At this stage, the Kremlin grew deeply distrustful of Amin. Soviet leadership feared that his brutal methods would fail, allowing an anti-Soviet Islamic state to form on their southern border. They might also suspect Amin of secretly harbouring ties to the American CIA. In any case, at this stage, Soviets staged the coup.
The Tudeh party was such a weak and unpopular political force in 1979 and 1981-82 that it had no chance of taking power either through a popular uprising or a military coup. The only chance the Tudeh had for coming into power was a full-scale invasion of Iran by the Soviet troops and the installation of a puppet government in Tehran.
This whole book is just unrefutable evidence of total ignorance of British intelligence and journalists of Iran and its internal affairs. You can't gain any other conclusion out of reading this book unless the author is still willing to wishfully lie to us, the readers.
The book has many minor minute facts that could also be very useful for serious researchers. But all of these are framed in a wrong and deceitful package.
Even now, after 50 years, you can see that there is not a single document of very significant importance in the Kuzichkin Dossier in relation to the Tudeh Party or this coup. It is all hearsay, memoirs, and forced confessions that accompany the author's narrative at the end of this book.
It is crucial that we focus on the fact that only one person, Houshang Asadi, is named as having confessed to the initial coup plot. There is nothing more, not even solid evidence of a first confession by Kianouri, only a narrative from Asadi. Readers should be cautious that the Tudeh Party has had a strong working relationship with Islamic regime forces, especially those from the judiciary and the Evin prison establishment, where Tudeh has previously helped them to allegedly foil plots by monarchist military officers and also by Ghotbzadeh, although Tudeh itself fabricated evidence rather than finding a plot. It was deeply involved in prosecuting other revolutionary groups and was cooperating with the Islamic regime, so the Islamic regime should have known about many of its members, cadres, and even military ties. The fact that the author seems to act like a paid propagandaist for Kuzichkin at the end and tries to use Rafsanjani's memoirs to justify Kuzichkin's acts is mind-boggling and shows the deep capability of Western journalists for lying and internalising these lies.
But what have been the ultimate results of this operation? Does Russia have a lesser influence than the US or the UK nowadays in Iran? The answer is a big, solid NO! So, the UK was the sole loser of this James Bond game. They just gave some useless information to IRGC murderers to kill a number of harmless political activists.
However, it is still unfathomable how such a ridiculous lie could still be uncritically narrated after 50 years, especially now that it is completely clear that the Tudeh party had less than one-tenth of the strength of the MEK, which was crushed by the Islamic regime a year before it attacked the Tudeh party. How could any sane person believe Tudeh could take over power in Tehran, where the MEK, a much more powerful and (at that time still) much more popular organisation, had been totally defeated and savagely prosecuted?
Any Soviet military intervention in Iran is also a sham and fabrication. Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan a while after a successful communist coup and takeover. They never initiated or facilitated the initial takeover of the power by the communists. The Afghans carried out that part. Thereafter, when the Soviets believed Amin's policies were harmful to their cause, they orchestrated a coup even though the communists were already in power.
The Indigenous Communist Takeover occurred in 1978, the Saur Revolution, in April 1978, when the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)—the local communist party—overthrew the government of President Mohammed Daoud Khan. Historical records show that the coup surprised the Soviet leadership. This whole part is not even mentioned in the book, while it is essential because it completely refutes the initial hypothesis that the Soviet Union would invade simultaneously to ensure a successful military coup in Iran. Because while Moscow had provided military and economic aid to Afghanistan for decades, they did not orchestrate, initiate, or facilitate this initial seizure of power.
Following the coup, the PDPA split into two hostile factions: the radical Khalq (Masses) faction led by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin and the more moderate Parcham (Banner) faction led by Babrak Karmel. When in September 1979, Hafizullah Amin seized sole power after a violent internal struggle that resulted in the assassination of Taraki, Amin pursued brutal, rapid modernisation and purging campaigns that triggered a massive, nationwide Islamist insurgency. At this stage, the Kremlin grew deeply distrustful of Amin. Soviet leadership feared that his brutal methods would fail, allowing an anti-Soviet Islamic state to form on their southern border. They might also suspect Amin of secretly harbouring ties to the American CIA. In any case, at this stage, Soviets staged the coup.
The Tudeh party was such a weak and unpopular political force in 1979 and 1981-82 that it had no chance of taking power either through a popular uprising or a military coup. The only chance the Tudeh had for coming into power was a full-scale invasion of Iran by the Soviet troops and the installation of a puppet government in Tehran.
This whole book is just unrefutable evidence of total ignorance of British intelligence and journalists of Iran and its internal affairs. You can't gain any other conclusion out of reading this book unless the author is still willing to wishfully lie to us, the readers.
The book has many minor minute facts that could also be very useful for serious researchers. But all of these are framed in a wrong and deceitful package.
Even now, after 50 years, you can see that there is not a single document of very significant importance in the Kuzichkin Dossier in relation to the Tudeh Party or this coup. It is all hearsay, memoirs, and forced confessions that accompany the author's narrative at the end of this book.
It is crucial that we focus on the fact that only one person, Houshang Asadi, is named as having confessed to the initial coup plot. There is nothing more, not even solid evidence of a first confession by Kianouri, only a narrative from Asadi. Readers should be cautious that the Tudeh Party has had a strong working relationship with Islamic regime forces, especially those from the judiciary and the Evin prison establishment, where Tudeh has previously helped them to allegedly foil plots by monarchist military officers and also by Ghotbzadeh, although Tudeh itself fabricated evidence rather than finding a plot. It was deeply involved in prosecuting other revolutionary groups and was cooperating with the Islamic regime, so the Islamic regime should have known about many of its members, cadres, and even military ties. The fact that the author seems to act like a paid propagandaist for Kuzichkin at the end and tries to use Rafsanjani's memoirs to justify Kuzichkin's acts is mind-boggling and shows the deep capability of Western journalists for lying and internalising these lies.
But what have been the ultimate results of this operation? Does Russia have a lesser influence than the US or the UK nowadays in Iran? The answer is a big, solid NO! So, the UK was the sole loser of this James Bond game. They just gave some useless information to IRGC murderers to kill a number of harmless political activists.
September 17, 2026
Macintyre does a very good job (again) of writing a compelling and pacey spy thriller, that's actually true. I warmed to Redwood and was rooting for him. And I enjoyed learning more about the Iranian revolution, of which I am very ignorant generally.
I did spend the whole time thinking why would anyone become a spy? Seems so stressful. But that is a separate dialog to what's happening in the book.
I did spend the whole time thinking why would anyone become a spy? Seems so stressful. But that is a separate dialog to what's happening in the book.
October 11, 2026
A high ranking KGB agent wants to defect to the west from his posting in Iran in the late 1970's. A young MI6 agent who is far from secure in his own posting is the one to take him on. The events of the defection are unusual and their effects far-reaching. Ben MacIntyre has written another superb spy tale with his usual comprehensive research and absorbing attention to detail. A great read. - BH.
September 20, 2026
Ben Macintyre’s Redwood is a different beast entirely—cooler, tauter, and driven by the quiet pulse of Cold War paranoia. It’s a classic Macintyre experience: brisk pacing, crisp prose, and a knack for finding the human heartbeat inside geopolitical machinery. This 4‑star read shines in its ability to make espionage feel both extraordinary and strangely intimate. If there’s a minor drawback, it’s that Macintyre’s trademark momentum occasionally leaves you wanting a little more reflection. But for fans of real-life spycraft, it’s a standout.
October 10, 2026
I love some Cold War espionage!
September 27, 2026
If The Spy and The Traitor was about the elegance of espionage, then this book was about how brutal, visceral, and long lasting the consequences of the hubris of a few men can be. Very difficult to put down.
November 2, 2026
Much like the spy with erectile dysfunction, this book had too much going on to perform. Soz Uncle Ben, I had high hopes after The Spy and the Traitor…
September 29, 2026
I loved this, and as all Ben Macintyre books it is fun, exhilarating , and very, very hard to put down.
It’s the story of a KGB officer in post-revolution Iran who turns to MI6, and how one almost-forgotten spy story ends up shaping geopolitics far beyond the Cold War. It’s wild reading it now and seeing how many seeds of today’s world — Hormuz, 9/11, and so much in between — were being sown in parallel.
The only thing holding it back from five stars for me was the sheer number of people to keep track of and I wish Macintyre could have reminded me from time to time.
It’s the story of a KGB officer in post-revolution Iran who turns to MI6, and how one almost-forgotten spy story ends up shaping geopolitics far beyond the Cold War. It’s wild reading it now and seeing how many seeds of today’s world — Hormuz, 9/11, and so much in between — were being sown in parallel.
The only thing holding it back from five stars for me was the sheer number of people to keep track of and I wish Macintyre could have reminded me from time to time.
June 11, 2026
Another excellent, thoroughly interesting and well researched book from Ben Mac!
October 4, 2026
mediocre stuff from a writer i expect more from. while the spy stuff is punchy as always, there's something about communism that brings out an annoying editorialising side of macintyre
generally the writing is a bit worse than in his normal work. there's a series of tedious tree-based puns that reoccur and never fail to be tiresome, descriptors are repeated, events are referred to over and over, presumably because macintyre assumes that you've forgotten that kuzichkin is quite tall or russian. it's hard to not see it as being partially a cover for the fact that the actual contents of the book are relatively thin; we spend around as much time outside of iran as we do in it. it's hard to see how this could have been properly worked around, but constantly being given detailed descriptions of completely irrelevant characters is not a particularly effective way of doing so
macintyre obviously has good sources and it's easy to see how the worldview of the people he is speaking to has bled into his own. there are constant, numbing references to how stupid communism is and how communism is wrong and how the kgb are doing silly things because of their beliefs, and it's incredibly boring to listen to. i frankly don't want macintyre to make snide little jabs about any ideology - that is not why i'm reading this book. if i wanted to hear someone land tepid burns against a state that doesn't exist any more i would simply attend a family gathering with some of my relatives, it is completely irrelevant here
it also impacts the coherence of the work. the kgb is simultaneously portrayed as vicious, cunning, brutally powerful AND a series of bumbling mr magoos who are incapable of matching up to the british and american services. which is it? were they days away from planning a coup that would somehow overthrow the entire iranian government, or were they a small team of incompetents? was kuzichkin constantly being surveilled and under threat by the kgb or were they genuinely shocked by his defection? it's hard to really say, because there is no meaningful attempt to reconcile these conflicting ideas. macintyre clearly has a fairly totemic view of the evils of the soviets, so they remain terrifyingly powerful and comically inept at the same time
it's galling because, well, they didn't really do much wrong here. we all know about the depredations of stalin's empire and the gulag but, ultimately, that isn't what's happening in this story in iran. what actually happens here is that the ussr assisted a totally legal political party, and then after a significant security breach, was unable to prevent that party from being brutally murdered in its entirety. why are they the bad guys again? because we don't like them? macintyre seems to take soviet spying as some kind of affront to the people of iran, somehow ignoring that not only was england also spying and vying for regime change, but that it also did so while sheltering in the swedish embassy, meaning that they actually were lying to two countries instead of one. that the consequences for the swedes would likely have been significant does not constitute a moral stain on the brits, unlike the soviets
there's a frankly nauseating segment at the end where macintyre waffles about the thousands of deaths caused by the release of the kuzichkin files to the iranians. all and sundry wring their hands nervously, somehow trying to convince the reader that they were genuinely shocked that the murderous theocratic regime would murder its citizens given a political reason. really? this is the position we're supposed to genuinely believe? that nobody recognised that the communists in iran would be slaughtered? it's deeply insulting to the intelligence of the reader, who is supposed to believe that these otherwise amoral spies who spend their lives working on understanding a region are somehow incapable of understanding a very clear and obvious cause and effect
but then, these are the purehearted british and americans, who are fighting to keep communism out of iran. despite causing thousands of times more death than the soviets in iran, they remain untouchably noble and pure of intention. that they are also trying to spread their ideology is not considered in any sense, because macintyre genuinely does not seem to recognise that this is what is happening. instead, any and all blushes are spared because of the manichean quality of the struggle. sure thousands died, but we're very sad about that and anyway, those bloody commies needed to be slaughtered (indirect quote from an american). hopefully in his next book he can take a step back from this bizarrely exculpatory view, but i sincerely doubt it
generally the writing is a bit worse than in his normal work. there's a series of tedious tree-based puns that reoccur and never fail to be tiresome, descriptors are repeated, events are referred to over and over, presumably because macintyre assumes that you've forgotten that kuzichkin is quite tall or russian. it's hard to not see it as being partially a cover for the fact that the actual contents of the book are relatively thin; we spend around as much time outside of iran as we do in it. it's hard to see how this could have been properly worked around, but constantly being given detailed descriptions of completely irrelevant characters is not a particularly effective way of doing so
macintyre obviously has good sources and it's easy to see how the worldview of the people he is speaking to has bled into his own. there are constant, numbing references to how stupid communism is and how communism is wrong and how the kgb are doing silly things because of their beliefs, and it's incredibly boring to listen to. i frankly don't want macintyre to make snide little jabs about any ideology - that is not why i'm reading this book. if i wanted to hear someone land tepid burns against a state that doesn't exist any more i would simply attend a family gathering with some of my relatives, it is completely irrelevant here
it also impacts the coherence of the work. the kgb is simultaneously portrayed as vicious, cunning, brutally powerful AND a series of bumbling mr magoos who are incapable of matching up to the british and american services. which is it? were they days away from planning a coup that would somehow overthrow the entire iranian government, or were they a small team of incompetents? was kuzichkin constantly being surveilled and under threat by the kgb or were they genuinely shocked by his defection? it's hard to really say, because there is no meaningful attempt to reconcile these conflicting ideas. macintyre clearly has a fairly totemic view of the evils of the soviets, so they remain terrifyingly powerful and comically inept at the same time
it's galling because, well, they didn't really do much wrong here. we all know about the depredations of stalin's empire and the gulag but, ultimately, that isn't what's happening in this story in iran. what actually happens here is that the ussr assisted a totally legal political party, and then after a significant security breach, was unable to prevent that party from being brutally murdered in its entirety. why are they the bad guys again? because we don't like them? macintyre seems to take soviet spying as some kind of affront to the people of iran, somehow ignoring that not only was england also spying and vying for regime change, but that it also did so while sheltering in the swedish embassy, meaning that they actually were lying to two countries instead of one. that the consequences for the swedes would likely have been significant does not constitute a moral stain on the brits, unlike the soviets
there's a frankly nauseating segment at the end where macintyre waffles about the thousands of deaths caused by the release of the kuzichkin files to the iranians. all and sundry wring their hands nervously, somehow trying to convince the reader that they were genuinely shocked that the murderous theocratic regime would murder its citizens given a political reason. really? this is the position we're supposed to genuinely believe? that nobody recognised that the communists in iran would be slaughtered? it's deeply insulting to the intelligence of the reader, who is supposed to believe that these otherwise amoral spies who spend their lives working on understanding a region are somehow incapable of understanding a very clear and obvious cause and effect
but then, these are the purehearted british and americans, who are fighting to keep communism out of iran. despite causing thousands of times more death than the soviets in iran, they remain untouchably noble and pure of intention. that they are also trying to spread their ideology is not considered in any sense, because macintyre genuinely does not seem to recognise that this is what is happening. instead, any and all blushes are spared because of the manichean quality of the struggle. sure thousands died, but we're very sad about that and anyway, those bloody commies needed to be slaughtered (indirect quote from an american). hopefully in his next book he can take a step back from this bizarrely exculpatory view, but i sincerely doubt it
September 25, 2026
Historian Ben MacIntyre can be relied upon to produce a first rate, well researched spy novel: historical fiction I think it’s called because after doing much research he does take the liberty of fictionalising some of the personal interactions. In this case he was able to talk to the MI6 operative in 1980s Iran, Ian McCredie, and had access to the published diaries of the KGB double agent in Tehran, Vladimir Kuzichkin and his estranged wife.
The setting is mainly in Tehran as the Clerics and Ayatollah Khomeini swept to power after deposing the much hated Shah. The Americans and CIA have been thrown out after the embassy siege and the Brits are hanging on by the skins of their teeth in the reluctant Swedish embassy. Can MI6 together with other allied powers prevent the Soviets from annexing Iran as a puppet state by supporting Iranian home grown communist organisations, as they were attempting to do in Afghanistan?
The actual outcome resulted in terrible loss of life imposed by the clerics on communists and ordinary people. Stopping the potential spread of the Kremlin’s power in the ‘great game’ as the Cold War was called, could be seen as a success story for the West’s spy machine but a human tragedy. This is a very nuanced book. This ambivalence reminded me of another book I have read recently: Berta Isla by Spanish writer Xavier Marias, about the difficult life of Tomas Nevinson and his family after he is recruited by MI6 as an infiltrator.
I particularly enjoyed it after reading two books by Iranian authors on this year’s International Booker Prize longlist: Shida Bazyar’s The Nights are Quiet in Tehran - great family story from the 1980s across the generations to the present day; Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women without Men - a feminist novel deriding Iran’s lack of human rights for women but with several clever surreal twists. I think both books are banned in Iran.
Overall a great read but leaves the reader feeling conflicted about global undercover espionage; the personal costs to the lives of the spies involved; how a ‘successful’ operation can have massive humanitarian consequences. Book reviews on all the books I have mentioned are here on Goodreads.
The setting is mainly in Tehran as the Clerics and Ayatollah Khomeini swept to power after deposing the much hated Shah. The Americans and CIA have been thrown out after the embassy siege and the Brits are hanging on by the skins of their teeth in the reluctant Swedish embassy. Can MI6 together with other allied powers prevent the Soviets from annexing Iran as a puppet state by supporting Iranian home grown communist organisations, as they were attempting to do in Afghanistan?
The actual outcome resulted in terrible loss of life imposed by the clerics on communists and ordinary people. Stopping the potential spread of the Kremlin’s power in the ‘great game’ as the Cold War was called, could be seen as a success story for the West’s spy machine but a human tragedy. This is a very nuanced book. This ambivalence reminded me of another book I have read recently: Berta Isla by Spanish writer Xavier Marias, about the difficult life of Tomas Nevinson and his family after he is recruited by MI6 as an infiltrator.
I particularly enjoyed it after reading two books by Iranian authors on this year’s International Booker Prize longlist: Shida Bazyar’s The Nights are Quiet in Tehran - great family story from the 1980s across the generations to the present day; Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women without Men - a feminist novel deriding Iran’s lack of human rights for women but with several clever surreal twists. I think both books are banned in Iran.
Overall a great read but leaves the reader feeling conflicted about global undercover espionage; the personal costs to the lives of the spies involved; how a ‘successful’ operation can have massive humanitarian consequences. Book reviews on all the books I have mentioned are here on Goodreads.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 10, 2026
Redwood was another good spy story from the undisputed master Ben Macintyre. This time it deals with an area which is less known, Iran during the Cold War and the time before and after the Islamic revolution.
As a spy story it's less appealing then the previous books, you just can't beat the spy stories from World War 2 as much as you would try. Yes, Vladimir Kuzichkin did take risks and did influence world history but nothing like the war altering schemes of the spies of old. Also, since he was a diplomat in another country the danger even though still there was a bit lower.
What i really enjoyed about this book was the overview of the events of the Islamic revolution and how slowly the IRGC defeated and eliminated all the other revolutionary groups. The struggle between the USSR and the US pervades the various operations and so does the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The end did raise the question whether trying to prevent Soviet influence in Iran did more harm then good. Just like the support of the Afghan fighters against the USSR spawned the Taliban, Al Qaida and later ISIS.
The book was really well written and researched but it's hard to beat the highs of something like Operation Mincemeat.
As a spy story it's less appealing then the previous books, you just can't beat the spy stories from World War 2 as much as you would try. Yes, Vladimir Kuzichkin did take risks and did influence world history but nothing like the war altering schemes of the spies of old. Also, since he was a diplomat in another country the danger even though still there was a bit lower.
What i really enjoyed about this book was the overview of the events of the Islamic revolution and how slowly the IRGC defeated and eliminated all the other revolutionary groups. The struggle between the USSR and the US pervades the various operations and so does the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The end did raise the question whether trying to prevent Soviet influence in Iran did more harm then good. Just like the support of the Afghan fighters against the USSR spawned the Taliban, Al Qaida and later ISIS.
The book was really well written and researched but it's hard to beat the highs of something like Operation Mincemeat.
October 19, 2026
I will preface by saying I'm not super enamored by spy stories, though I do read nonfiction quite regularly. I can understand why this author is popular, and can see why his audience enjoys his stories. I was a bit bored during this, as the pacing was a bit inconsistent for me. I did learn a lot, but idk that I'll be chomping at the bit to read another spy nonfiction book from the author anytime soon.
November 5, 2026
When the author gets to the part of the book where he explains how they came up with the cryptonym “Redwood” I literally stopped and was like WTF. For the majority of the book, with exception to the very end, this book was a slog. I kept hoping, that with each chapter, it would get better but nope. An incredibly long and painful book to get through, that only picks up in the last few chapters.
I must say Ben Macintyre is brilliant and I have enjoyed his other work but this one wasn’t for me.
🎧
I must say Ben Macintyre is brilliant and I have enjoyed his other work but this one wasn’t for me.
🎧
September 26, 2026
Macintyre is so good and so prolific. He has made a career of unearthing these exciting chapters of war and espionage.
October 24, 2026
We were lucky enough to pick up the airport edition of this before more widespread publication, and in advance of Ben MacIntyre’s appearance at the Henley Literary Festival.
His talk of an hour or so was excellent and the book is (of those I’ve read of his so far - which is many) the best of the lot.
Gripping from start to finish, with numerous “Oh my god!” moments along the way as well as some humorous turns.
Hugely entertaining and highly recommended.
His talk of an hour or so was excellent and the book is (of those I’ve read of his so far - which is many) the best of the lot.
Gripping from start to finish, with numerous “Oh my god!” moments along the way as well as some humorous turns.
Hugely entertaining and highly recommended.
October 4, 2026
This might be the first Ben Macintyre book which I had to slog through a bit. After having read "The spy and the traitor" and "A spy among friends" you can sort of guess how Ben Macintyre will handle this subject matter. It seemed predictable and also sadly like a money grab. With the ongoing war in Iran, it is the best time to release a book like this. Some of the passages felt hyperbolic, almost trying to inflate the importance of the protagonist. Trying to insinuate that if the protagonist had not done what he did, the world might have faced nuclear Armageddon. This seems to be a huge stretch to get to sell more books.
Maybe I have read one two many Ben Macintyre book and find it too formulaic, or maybe this book really was rushed to cash in on the current news cycle. Whatever the case may be, the book while engaging was far from his best work.
Maybe I have read one two many Ben Macintyre book and find it too formulaic, or maybe this book really was rushed to cash in on the current news cycle. Whatever the case may be, the book while engaging was far from his best work.
October 24, 2026
Another great book from ben macintyre, in some way can explain the Middle East situation today and lots of good stuff on the Cold War and Russia
October 6, 2026
As riveting, detail-filled, and humanizing as Macintyre's books typicall are.
September 23, 2026
Ben Macintyre at his best with a big bit of history told through the story of a few very compelling people. I don't remember so many moments that made me chuckle in his previous writings. Very timely and tense.
November 4, 2026
The Russian double agent who foiled the Soviet takeover of Iran
When we read history, we tend to compartmentalize. For example, Americans may read about the Red Scare of the McCarthy era and lose sight of the fact that the Korean War was raging at the same time. And that’s important because the two affected each other. Similarly, we may think of Iran’s modern history beginning in 1979 and growing into the theocratic tyranny it is today. Yet we might forget that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan next door in the same year—and that the Cold War was underway all the while Ayatollah Khomeini solidified his power. Leave it to British popular historian Ben MacIntyre to highlight the close connection between the two. In Redwood, his superb tale of an uncover KGB officer in Tehran who defected to the UK in 1982, MacIntyre tells the extraordinary story of how a spy shifted the course of history.
The reason he defected will surprise you
After his posting to Tehran in 1977, Major Vladimir Kuzichkin (1947-2009) became the KGB’s top spy in Iran because a married couple of illegal agents he ran were flooding Moscow with insightful intelligence. Yet all was not well in the major’s life. His marriage was foundering because he was unable to satisfy his wife in bed. Meanwhile, the illegals were producing less and less actionable intelligence, and Kuzichkin was coming under pressure from his superiors. Eventually, to protect himself and to obtain “magic pills” to correct his erectile dysfunction—pills that didn’t exist at the time—he defected to Britain. Yes, he defected for Viagra.
Moscow’s best agent in Tehran
Macintyre’s story opens in 1981. Tehran is in violent upheaval after the Iranian Revolution. Factions abound within the revolutionary forces, some among the Islamists themselves, others on the Left. The Soviet Union is laying the foundation to overthrow the Ayatollah’s new Islamist government. And that would pose a strategic challenge to the USA, which, like the Soviets, regarded Iran as the linchpin to the Middle East and its oil. If they succeed, Moscow will gain access to Persian Gulf oil and warm-water ports that might shift the Cold War balance. With the hawks in the ascendancy in Washington under Ronald Reagan, it’s entirely possible the American response will be nuclear. So, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Enter Vladimir Kuzichkin, later codenamed “Redwood.” He’s the liaison for the KGB to the Iranian Communists, the Tudeh party. But, compounding the difficulty in his marriage, he has become disillusioned. He had expected to join an elite corps of ideological warriors in Tehran but finds his Soviet colleagues corrupt, lazy, and drunk. He has come to believe the Soviet system is riddled with corruption. The combination of intellectual conviction and personal problems leads him to contact MI6. Kuzichkin volunteers to spy for the British for one year if they will agree to arrange for him to be circumcized, an operation he thinks will cure his erectile dysfunction and supply him with pills to ensure it works.
An escape plan that was almost certain to fail
The major’s main contact was a young undercover MI6 officer, Ian McCredie. Over eight months spying from inside the Soviet Embassy, Kuzichkin produced a flood of critical intelligence. It showed the Tudeh Party as a Soviet-funded puppet directed and armed by the KGB. But Iranian intelligence and the KGB were close to uncovering Kuzichkin’s treachery. McCredie, then, had to devise an escape plan. And there was only one possible route. Yet even that route would almost certainly lead to failure. Still, with the support of his bosses in London, McCredie put the plan into action. He personally drove Kuzichkin to the border at great risk to himself.
Then MI6 swung into action in consultation with the CIA. Responding to Cold War imperatives, the British turned over everything Kuzichkin had revealed to the Ayatollah’s regime. This included an exhaustive list of the top leaders of the Tudeh and the more radical factions as well as details about all the Russian agents operating in Iran. The regime rounded up thousands of Tudeh members and other Leftists. There were show trials reminiscent of Josef Stalin. And many were executed.
As is the case with his previous books, Macintyre’s research was extensive. He drew on previously unseen material from several countries and interviews with officers from MI6, MI5, the KGB and the CIA. And the result is a book that’s not only on solid historical ground but is written with all the verve and tension of a top-notch spy novel.
About the author
Ben MacIntyre has received numerous awards for many of the 17 books he has published. He was born in Oxford in 1963, the son of an Oxford history don and an aristocratic mother. He attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he earned a degree in history.
When we read history, we tend to compartmentalize. For example, Americans may read about the Red Scare of the McCarthy era and lose sight of the fact that the Korean War was raging at the same time. And that’s important because the two affected each other. Similarly, we may think of Iran’s modern history beginning in 1979 and growing into the theocratic tyranny it is today. Yet we might forget that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan next door in the same year—and that the Cold War was underway all the while Ayatollah Khomeini solidified his power. Leave it to British popular historian Ben MacIntyre to highlight the close connection between the two. In Redwood, his superb tale of an uncover KGB officer in Tehran who defected to the UK in 1982, MacIntyre tells the extraordinary story of how a spy shifted the course of history.
The reason he defected will surprise you
After his posting to Tehran in 1977, Major Vladimir Kuzichkin (1947-2009) became the KGB’s top spy in Iran because a married couple of illegal agents he ran were flooding Moscow with insightful intelligence. Yet all was not well in the major’s life. His marriage was foundering because he was unable to satisfy his wife in bed. Meanwhile, the illegals were producing less and less actionable intelligence, and Kuzichkin was coming under pressure from his superiors. Eventually, to protect himself and to obtain “magic pills” to correct his erectile dysfunction—pills that didn’t exist at the time—he defected to Britain. Yes, he defected for Viagra.
Moscow’s best agent in Tehran
Macintyre’s story opens in 1981. Tehran is in violent upheaval after the Iranian Revolution. Factions abound within the revolutionary forces, some among the Islamists themselves, others on the Left. The Soviet Union is laying the foundation to overthrow the Ayatollah’s new Islamist government. And that would pose a strategic challenge to the USA, which, like the Soviets, regarded Iran as the linchpin to the Middle East and its oil. If they succeed, Moscow will gain access to Persian Gulf oil and warm-water ports that might shift the Cold War balance. With the hawks in the ascendancy in Washington under Ronald Reagan, it’s entirely possible the American response will be nuclear. So, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Enter Vladimir Kuzichkin, later codenamed “Redwood.” He’s the liaison for the KGB to the Iranian Communists, the Tudeh party. But, compounding the difficulty in his marriage, he has become disillusioned. He had expected to join an elite corps of ideological warriors in Tehran but finds his Soviet colleagues corrupt, lazy, and drunk. He has come to believe the Soviet system is riddled with corruption. The combination of intellectual conviction and personal problems leads him to contact MI6. Kuzichkin volunteers to spy for the British for one year if they will agree to arrange for him to be circumcized, an operation he thinks will cure his erectile dysfunction and supply him with pills to ensure it works.
An escape plan that was almost certain to fail
The major’s main contact was a young undercover MI6 officer, Ian McCredie. Over eight months spying from inside the Soviet Embassy, Kuzichkin produced a flood of critical intelligence. It showed the Tudeh Party as a Soviet-funded puppet directed and armed by the KGB. But Iranian intelligence and the KGB were close to uncovering Kuzichkin’s treachery. McCredie, then, had to devise an escape plan. And there was only one possible route. Yet even that route would almost certainly lead to failure. Still, with the support of his bosses in London, McCredie put the plan into action. He personally drove Kuzichkin to the border at great risk to himself.
Then MI6 swung into action in consultation with the CIA. Responding to Cold War imperatives, the British turned over everything Kuzichkin had revealed to the Ayatollah’s regime. This included an exhaustive list of the top leaders of the Tudeh and the more radical factions as well as details about all the Russian agents operating in Iran. The regime rounded up thousands of Tudeh members and other Leftists. There were show trials reminiscent of Josef Stalin. And many were executed.
As is the case with his previous books, Macintyre’s research was extensive. He drew on previously unseen material from several countries and interviews with officers from MI6, MI5, the KGB and the CIA. And the result is a book that’s not only on solid historical ground but is written with all the verve and tension of a top-notch spy novel.
About the author
Ben MacIntyre has received numerous awards for many of the 17 books he has published. He was born in Oxford in 1963, the son of an Oxford history don and an aristocratic mother. He attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he earned a degree in history.
October 25, 2026
The good thing about Ben Macintyre is that you know what you’re going to get, and given this is a book about a defecting Soviet spy (for which, ‘The Spy and the Traitor’ is already a good dry-run) - you know the floor is going to be very high. But I have to say, this was probably my favourite Macintyre yet.
The only thing I disliked was the framing. ‘Vladimir Kuzichkin’s defection to Britain from the KGB’s Tehran station’, the dust jacket loudly proclaims, ‘prevented a Communist coup in Iran and an inevitable US nuclear reaction’. The trouble with believing that theory is that its primary proponents are all either (a) idiots who got pretty much every foreign political assessment wrong; (b) people with a reason to distort the truth; or (c) both. To my mind, far more credible is the assessment of Iran’s former parliamentary speaker and President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - whose view is that the Iranian Tudeh party would have been very happy to launch a coup, but didn’t have any actual ability to do so (at least immediately after 1979). But, in fairness, the dust jacket probably comes from the publishers - and Macintyre himself is much more understated in the book. Kuzichkin’s defection did lead to the crushing of the Tudeh party at the hands of the regime, and contributed to a regional spiral of violence that continues to this day - and, ultimately, that’s a much more nuanced and interesting story. In the end, that’s a criticism I can therefore get over.
In terms of the good - in ‘Redwood’, I felt that Macintyre avoided his two biggest flaws from previous books. ‘Redwood’ probably doesn’t reach the levels of ‘The Spy and the Traitor’ when it comes to describing the high octane drama of the defection itself, but it’s a much more complete book. Unlike Oleg Gordievsky, Kuzichkin is allowed a story that stands on its own two feet - rather than being paralleled against a much less interesting (and, ultimately, half-baked) side narrative that serves only to slow the book’s pace. Alongside that, my pet theory is that Macintyre is at times a less than closet Tory - but not only does ‘Redwood’ avoid the usual fawning over ‘Mrs Thatcher’, but here we get a genuine assessment of whether the British security services might have got something wrong. Granted, that’s in part because the decimation of the Tudeh party consolidated the power of the regime (which is an easy criticism to level) - but Macintyre also points the reader towards the human cost of what was ultimately a particularly callous transaction by MI6. The reader is allowed to build a relationship with Tudeh leader Noureddin Kianouri, and I thought Macintyre was more even-handed in ‘Redwood’ than in many of his other books. I appreciated that.
The only thing I disliked was the framing. ‘Vladimir Kuzichkin’s defection to Britain from the KGB’s Tehran station’, the dust jacket loudly proclaims, ‘prevented a Communist coup in Iran and an inevitable US nuclear reaction’. The trouble with believing that theory is that its primary proponents are all either (a) idiots who got pretty much every foreign political assessment wrong; (b) people with a reason to distort the truth; or (c) both. To my mind, far more credible is the assessment of Iran’s former parliamentary speaker and President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - whose view is that the Iranian Tudeh party would have been very happy to launch a coup, but didn’t have any actual ability to do so (at least immediately after 1979). But, in fairness, the dust jacket probably comes from the publishers - and Macintyre himself is much more understated in the book. Kuzichkin’s defection did lead to the crushing of the Tudeh party at the hands of the regime, and contributed to a regional spiral of violence that continues to this day - and, ultimately, that’s a much more nuanced and interesting story. In the end, that’s a criticism I can therefore get over.
In terms of the good - in ‘Redwood’, I felt that Macintyre avoided his two biggest flaws from previous books. ‘Redwood’ probably doesn’t reach the levels of ‘The Spy and the Traitor’ when it comes to describing the high octane drama of the defection itself, but it’s a much more complete book. Unlike Oleg Gordievsky, Kuzichkin is allowed a story that stands on its own two feet - rather than being paralleled against a much less interesting (and, ultimately, half-baked) side narrative that serves only to slow the book’s pace. Alongside that, my pet theory is that Macintyre is at times a less than closet Tory - but not only does ‘Redwood’ avoid the usual fawning over ‘Mrs Thatcher’, but here we get a genuine assessment of whether the British security services might have got something wrong. Granted, that’s in part because the decimation of the Tudeh party consolidated the power of the regime (which is an easy criticism to level) - but Macintyre also points the reader towards the human cost of what was ultimately a particularly callous transaction by MI6. The reader is allowed to build a relationship with Tudeh leader Noureddin Kianouri, and I thought Macintyre was more even-handed in ‘Redwood’ than in many of his other books. I appreciated that.
October 14, 2026
Another banger. This book details the lead up to and aftermath of a senior KGB official stationed in post-revolution Tehran defecting to Britain with the aid of a newfound MI6 ally. Like all MacIntyre books, the main players are portrayed vividly and I always appreciate how much we learn about people who have little presence or name recognition. You get that with Kuzichkin and McCredie, a compelling and unlikely duo.
One thing I grapple with is the level of detail that goes beyond these two to make this story worth telling. Beyond just the two players, you learn a lot about the Iran they are situated in. You learn about the political dynamics, the crushing police state, the relationship between Iran and the US/UK/USSR, and the people within all these points and more. Without this history, the story would lack perspective and the later parts of the book would hold no weight. As critical as it is, I also felt like it pulled me away at times and Kuzichkin and McCredie sat in the backseat far longer than I would have wanted them to. Readers of other MacIntyre books may encounter more context than he has previously provided. I haven't read The Spy and The Traitor (his magnum opus) in years but I feel like you were always following Gordievsky in that one.
Rambling aside, this is still a good entry in his bibliography and it has practically all of the elements he is known and acclaimed for. It's still a very worthwhile read.
One thing I grapple with is the level of detail that goes beyond these two to make this story worth telling. Beyond just the two players, you learn a lot about the Iran they are situated in. You learn about the political dynamics, the crushing police state, the relationship between Iran and the US/UK/USSR, and the people within all these points and more. Without this history, the story would lack perspective and the later parts of the book would hold no weight. As critical as it is, I also felt like it pulled me away at times and Kuzichkin and McCredie sat in the backseat far longer than I would have wanted them to. Readers of other MacIntyre books may encounter more context than he has previously provided. I haven't read The Spy and The Traitor (his magnum opus) in years but I feel like you were always following Gordievsky in that one.
Rambling aside, this is still a good entry in his bibliography and it has practically all of the elements he is known and acclaimed for. It's still a very worthwhile read.
November 6, 2026
Author Ben Macintyre has done it again – given us another excellent true story about espionage during the Cold War.
This one is about Vladimir Kuzichkin, a KGB officer stationed in Iran during the time of the revolution. Gradually repulsed and disillusioned by the actions of the Soviet Union and the KGB, he decided to switch sides and became a mole for MI6, delivering to it tons of information about the KGB in general, and specifically, its attempts to foment a communist revolution in Iran using that country’s communist party, so that the Soviet Union might later invade to gain control of Iran’s oil.
Kuzichkin, himself, is a very human, very compelling figure. At times, his exploits read like something out of a John Le Carre novel.
But the story Macintyre tells is about more than just Kuzichkin. It’s about the Cold War and geopolitics of the time, the Iranian revolution, the ascendancy of Ayatollah Khomeini, the conflict between his theocracy and Iranian communists, the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan, British, American, and Soviet relations with Iran, their intelligence operations, day-to-day life for embassy personnel in Tehran, and the spy craft utilized by intelligence officers.
While I remember the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis, I also remember that once that crisis was over I (like many Americans, I imagine), stopped paying attention to Iran and therefore had very little idea of what went on there, or what role it continued to play in the Cold War and the later collapse of the Soviet Union. “Redwood” does an excellent job of filling that gap, and of explaining how the information provided by Kuzichkin affected Iran, the region, and the world both at that time and today.
This one is about Vladimir Kuzichkin, a KGB officer stationed in Iran during the time of the revolution. Gradually repulsed and disillusioned by the actions of the Soviet Union and the KGB, he decided to switch sides and became a mole for MI6, delivering to it tons of information about the KGB in general, and specifically, its attempts to foment a communist revolution in Iran using that country’s communist party, so that the Soviet Union might later invade to gain control of Iran’s oil.
Kuzichkin, himself, is a very human, very compelling figure. At times, his exploits read like something out of a John Le Carre novel.
But the story Macintyre tells is about more than just Kuzichkin. It’s about the Cold War and geopolitics of the time, the Iranian revolution, the ascendancy of Ayatollah Khomeini, the conflict between his theocracy and Iranian communists, the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan, British, American, and Soviet relations with Iran, their intelligence operations, day-to-day life for embassy personnel in Tehran, and the spy craft utilized by intelligence officers.
While I remember the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis, I also remember that once that crisis was over I (like many Americans, I imagine), stopped paying attention to Iran and therefore had very little idea of what went on there, or what role it continued to play in the Cold War and the later collapse of the Soviet Union. “Redwood” does an excellent job of filling that gap, and of explaining how the information provided by Kuzichkin affected Iran, the region, and the world both at that time and today.
November 12, 2026
I've read quite a few of Ben Macintyre's books in the last twelve months. His true life stories about the secret services of the major players in the Cold War, KGB, CIA and MI6. For me this field is fascinating. It's high suspense, skulduggery, cloak-and-dagger, life-or-death struggles of highly intelligent and brave people.
His latest book Redwood concerns the situation in Iran in the wake of the revolution in 1979. After the USA hostage crisis, the CIA were effectively kicked out of the country but the Brits kept a skeleton crew in Tehran. The Soviet Union and the KGB still had a major presence in the city, at the same time the USSR were fighting a war in Afghanistan. The stakes were high, Iran's oil and access to the Gulf were a major concern to the Western Powers.
KGB's second in command at the Soviet embassy had become disillusioned about his country and the communist system in general. So he reached out to a MI6 operative in Tehran and what follows is the story of their collusion.
Ben Macintyre has outdone himself with this book. He writes with confidence and authority and surprisingly good humor. I think this is his best book to date. 5 out of 5 stars. Excellent reading.
His latest book Redwood concerns the situation in Iran in the wake of the revolution in 1979. After the USA hostage crisis, the CIA were effectively kicked out of the country but the Brits kept a skeleton crew in Tehran. The Soviet Union and the KGB still had a major presence in the city, at the same time the USSR were fighting a war in Afghanistan. The stakes were high, Iran's oil and access to the Gulf were a major concern to the Western Powers.
KGB's second in command at the Soviet embassy had become disillusioned about his country and the communist system in general. So he reached out to a MI6 operative in Tehran and what follows is the story of their collusion.
Ben Macintyre has outdone himself with this book. He writes with confidence and authority and surprisingly good humor. I think this is his best book to date. 5 out of 5 stars. Excellent reading.
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