Tony Rossiter examines a writer whose true stories read like fiction
Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister in Paraguay
in 1886. When she returned to Europe
she inspired the cult of her brother’s
philosophy, and she later became a
mentor to Hitler. Macintyre has followed
this with a string of bestselling spy stories,
every one of them true. I’ll concentrate
on three of the most widely admired.Agent Zigzag
Published in 2007, Agent Zigzag: The
True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman:
Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy is the story of
a professional criminal who became a
double agent during the Second World
War. It’s an extraordinary tale about a
complex man who had no compunction
about burglary and safe-breaking, and
combined this with a love of subterfuge,
adventure and daring-do heroism. Eddie
Chapman was both a villain and a hero.
Before the war he was a safecracker with
London gangs and spent several stretches
in gaol. In 1939, arrested for blowing up
the safe of the Edinburgh Co-operative
Society but released on bail, he fled to
Jersey, where he committed yet another
burglary. This resulted in two years’
imprisonment, but it spared him the
fourteen-plus years he expected to receive
on returning to the mainland.
Following the German occupation
of the Channel Islands, Chapman
volunteered to spy for Germany; he
had extensive training in German-
occupied France in explosives, radio
communications and espionage
techniques. In December 1942, he was
flown to Britain and parachuted into the
Cambridgeshire countryside, tasked with
sabotaging the de Havilland factory in40 APRIL 2020‘I
f you’re looking for a good
spy thriller, I definitely
recommend this,’ said a review
in the Daily Express. The book
was not an invented spy yarn,
but a true story – Agent Zigzag. Fact can
be stranger than fiction.
Ben Macintyre, historian and Times
journalist, has written ten meticulously
researched books about adventurers
and eccentrics from the world of crime
and espionage. They are gripping page-
turners by an author who combines the
disciplines and techniques of journalism
with the flair of a natural storyteller.How he began
As a child, he was a voracious reader of
Enid Blyton, Ronald Welch, Marryat’s
The Children of the New Forest and
the children’s histories of RJ Unstead.
Educated at Abingdon School and St
John’s College, Oxford, he graduated in
1985 with a degree in history. He has
a high regard for Moby-Dick (Herman
Melville) and The Great Gatsby (Scott
Fitzgerald), and favourite authors include
PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, William
Boyd, Robert Harris, Zadie Smith,
Charles Cumming and (surprise, surprise)
John le Carré.
After university, Macintyre became
a foreign correspondent for The Times,
working in New York, Paris and
Washington. Since 1996, he’s had a
weekly column, writing about history,
espionage, art, politics and foreign affairs.
His first book, Forgotten Fatherland: The
Search for Elizabeth Nietzsche (1992), was
based on interviews with descendants of
the bizarre Aryan colony established byHatfield. He immediately gave himself
up to the local police and offered his
services to MI5. A fake sabotage attack
on the de Havilland factory convinced
his German handlers that Chapman had
accomplished his mission, so that when
he returned to France he was rewarded,
inducted into the German Army as an
oberleutnant and sent to teach at a spy
school in Oslo. He was able to provide
MI5 with extensive intelligence about the
German Army.
In 1944 the Germans parachuted
him back into Britain to report on the
accuracy of their V1 flying bombs and
on development of the Royal Navy’s
hedgehog anti-submarine weapon.
Chapman reported that the German V1s
were hitting their central London target
when they were in fact undershooting
and landing mainly in the south London
suburbs or the Kent countryside, causing
far less damage. On his return to London,
Chapman again became involved with
criminal gangs in the West End; and in
November 1944, MI5, being unable to
control him, dismissed him from their
service. He was given a pay-off of £6,000
and pardoned from prosecution for his
pre-war criminal activities.A Spy Among Friends
There have been several books about
Kim Philby, who was recruited as a Soviet
agent in 1934. One of the Cambridge
Five Spy Ring unmasked many years
later, he worked as a journalist before
joining the Secret Intelligence Service,
MI6, in 1940. Thereafter, he was a
double agent, providing his Soviet
controllers with reams of increasinglyhttp://www.writers-online.co.uk© Geraint Lewis/Writer Pictures© Geraint Lewis/Writer PicturesMACINTYRE
(^) The style &
technique of
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technique of
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Agent Zigzag