The Siege - by Ben MacIntyre

Book Synopsis

A thrilling tick-tock recounting one of the most harrowing hostage situations and daring rescue attempts of our time--from the true-life espionage master and New York Times bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat and The Spy and the Traitor.

"[Ben Macintyre is] John le Carré's nonfiction counterpart."--The New York Times

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Minnesota Star Tribune, Parade

As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff, one that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath.

Policeman Trevor Lock was supposed to have gone to the theater that night. Instead, he found himself overpowered and whisked into the embassy. The terrorists never noticed the gun hidden in his jacket. The drama that ensued would force him to find reserves of courage he didn't know he had. The gunmen themselves were hardly one-dimensional--all Arabs, some highly educated, who hoped to force Britain to take their side in their independence battle against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Behind the scenes lurked the brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had bankrolled the whole affair as a salvo against Iran.

As police negotiators pressed the gunmen, rival protestors clashed violently outside the embassy, and as MI6 and the CIA scrambled for intelligence, Britain's special forces strike team, the SAS, laid plans for a dangerous rescue mission. Inside, Lock and his fellow hostages used all the cunning they possessed to outwit and outflank their captors. Finally, on the sixth day, after the terrorists executed the embassy press attaché and dumped his body on the front doorstep, the SAS raid began, sparking a deadly high-stakes climax.

A story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure, The Siege takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades and provide a direct historical link to the tragedy on 9/11. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Macintyre brilliantly reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.

Review Quotes

"John le Carré's nonfiction counterpart."--The New York Times

"Macintyre has a knack for finding the most fascinating story lines in history."--David Grann

"One of the most gifted espionage writers around."--Annie Jacobsen

"Macintyre is a supremely gifted storyteller. . . . His books are absurdly entertaining."--The Boston Globe

"[Ben] Macintyre at once exalts and subverts the myths of spy craft."--The New Yorker

"Macintyre is fastidious about tradecraft details. . . . [He] has become the preeminent popular chronicler of British intelligence history because he understands the essence of the business."--David Ignatius, The Washington Post

"Macintyre writes with novelistic flair."--Entertainment Weekly

"Macintyre is a superb writer, with an eye for the telling detail as fine as any novelist's."--The Dallas Morning News

"Macintyre writes with the diligence and insight of a journalist, and the panache of a born storyteller."--John Banville, The Guardian (UK)

"With Macintyre in charge, you're virtually guaranteed a history book that reads like a spy novel."--Richmond Times-Dispatch

"A scrupulous and insightful writer--a master historian."--Alan Furst, author of Mission to Paris

"Macintyre is a master at leading the reader down some very tortuous paths while ensuring they never lose their bearings."--Evening Standard (UK)

"Macintyre . . . has that enviable gift, the inability to write a dull sentence."--The Spectator (UK)

About the Author