The Greatest Traitor
The Secret Lives of Agent George Blake
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Narrated by:
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Michael Tudor Barnes
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By:
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Roger Hermiston
About this listen
On 3 May 1961, after a trial conducted largely in secret, a man named George Blake was sentenced to an unprecedented 42 years in jail. By his own confession he was a Soviet spy, but the reasons for such a severe punishment were never revealed.
To the public, Blake was simply the greatest traitor of the Cold War. Yet his story touches not only the depths of treachery, but also the heights of heroism.
Drawing on hitherto unpublished records from his trial, new revelations about his dramatic jailbreak from Wormwood Scrubs, and original interviews with former spies, friends and the man himself this audiobook sheds new light on this most complex of characters and presents a fascinating shadow history of the Cold War.
©2013 Roger Hermiston (P)2013 SoundingsListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Based on exclusive and unrestricted access to more than 5,000 pages of personal writings and family photos, this definitive biography of German physician and SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Josef Mengele (1911-1979) probes the personality and motivations of Auschwitz's "Angel of Death". From May 1943 through January 1945, Mengele selected who would be gassed immediately, who would be worked to death, and who would serve as involuntary guinea pigs for his spurious and ghastly human experiments (twins were Mengele's particular obsession).
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ONE OF THE WORST BOOKS I HAVE EVER READ
- By PAUL on 08-02-20
By: Gerald Posner, and others
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The Art of Resistance
- My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
- By: Justus Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.
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Rosenberg, Please focus
- By Jess on 03-20-22
By: Justus Rosenberg
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Che Guevara
- A Revolutionary Life
- By: Jon Lee Anderson
- Narrated by: Armando Durán
- Length: 36 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Che Guevara was a dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and the developing world through armed revolution. Jon Lee Anderson traces Che's extraordinary life from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro's government to his failed campaign in the Congo and his assassination in the Bolivian jungle.
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Encompassing and Fair Look at an Historical Man
- By Matt on 08-10-11
By: Jon Lee Anderson
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The Correspondents
- Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II
- By: Judith Mackrell
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms with men.
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Narration was nails on a chalkboard
- By aunt deb on 12-20-21
By: Judith Mackrell
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Nazi Wives
- The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany
- By: James Wyllie
- Narrated by: Dalya Raphael
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margarete, Lina, Ilse, and Gerda. These are the women behind the infamous men - complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families, and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself.
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Scary
- By Three River on 05-15-21
By: James Wyllie
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Jackal
- The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal
- By: John Follain
- Narrated by: Paul Christy
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On an August night in 1994, French counterespionage officers seized the world's most wanted terrorist from a villa in the Sudan. After more than two decades on the run, Carlos "the Jackal" had finally been caged. For years he had murdered and bombed his way to notoriety, evading capture thanks to powerful backers and the blunders of Western secret services. Jackal is the definitive biography of this self-proclaimed "professional revolutionary", ladies man, and cold-blooded killer.
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Its' like James Bond (but for the bad guys)
- By Grant Wentworth on 06-17-18
By: John Follain
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All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days
- The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
- By: Rebecca Donner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Donner
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution.
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Riveting narrative non fiction
- By Sarah Q on 10-22-21
By: Rebecca Donner
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Crucible
- The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924
- By: Charles Emmerson
- Narrated by: Charles Emmerson
- Length: 25 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In Petrograd, a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to Siberia. A rancorous Russian exile returns to proclaim a workers' revolution. In America, black soldiers who have served their country in Europe demand their rights at home. An Austrian war veteran trained by the German army to give rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against the Jews. A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk into a celebrity. An American reporter living the high life in Paris searches out a new literary style.
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Splendid in all respects
- By Paul Custer on 02-11-20
By: Charles Emmerson
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The Patient Assassin
- A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence
- By: Anita Anand
- Narrated by: Anita Anand
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The “compelling [and] vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) true story of a man who claimed to be a survivor of a 1919 British massacre in India, his elaborate 20-year plan for revenge, and the mix of truth and legend that made him a hero to hundreds of millions.
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more interesting history
- By Autodidact on 09-07-19
By: Anita Anand
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Checkpoint Charlie
- The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
- By: Iain MacGregor
- Narrated by: Dugald Bruce Lockhart
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the US confronted the USSR during the Cold War.
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Hard to follow
- By J.Brock on 03-07-21
By: Iain MacGregor
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The Vatican Pimpernel
- The World War II Exploits of the Monsignor Who Saved Over 6,500 Lives
- By: Brian Fleming
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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During the German occupation of Rome from 1942-1944, Irishman Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty ran an escape organization for Allied POWs and civilians, including Jews. Safe within the Vatican state, he regularly ventured out in disguise to continue his mission, which earned him the nickname 'The Pimpernel of the Vatican'. When the Allies entered Rome, he and his collaborators - priests, nuns, and laypeople of numerous nationalities and religious beliefs - had saved the lives of over 6,500 people.
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Enthralling
- By Jean on 05-27-15
By: Brian Fleming
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D-Day Girls
- The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II
- By: Sarah Rose
- Narrated by: Sarah Rose
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To "set Europe ablaze," in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.
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an excellent story ruined by horrible narration
- By Joshua on 04-23-19
By: Sarah Rose
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Do Not Disturb
- The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad
- By: Michela Wrong
- Narrated by: Michela Wrong
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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We think we know the story of Africa’s Great Lakes region. Following the Rwandan genocide, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that made Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. But the truth was considerably more sinister.
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What is true and what isn't?
- By Buretto on 11-30-21
By: Michela Wrong
What listeners say about The Greatest Traitor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Robyn
- 01-26-14
Ripping yarn, and all true!
Blake is a fascinating character and his life, thinking, and motivations are explored and presented in this well-written account. The era and historical context of the events are also explored so the book is both history lesson and biography as well as a ripping yarn. Blake was a highly intelligent and quite charismatic man who lived an exceptionally full and often exciting life with some nail-biting episodes to keep the reader enthralled. A fiction writer couldn't have created a more complex protagonist or a more interesting plot. Full marks to the author on every aspect of the book, and to Michael Tudor Barnes for his very competent narration.
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