Title:                      Spy for Stalin

Author:                 Hamish MacGibbon

MacGibbon, Hamish (2017). Spy for Stalin: The Story of a British Super-agent in World War II. London: I B Tauris & Co Ltd

OCLC:    953982011

E743.5

Date Posted:      April 13, 2017

Reviewed in The Intelligencer[1]

A few years before he died, James MacGibbon confessed to his closest family members that he had spied for the Soviet Union during WWII. At the end of the war, MI5 suspected him of espionage and interrogated him but he did not confess. Nevertheless they kept James, his wife Jean and their young family under close surveillance for a number of years, regularly intercepting their mail and recording their telephone conversations. Only after James’s death did the true significance of what he might have revealed become clear—in his wartime office role. James had access to the plans for Operation OVERLORD, D-Day. In this book, James’s son Hamish tells the story of his parents, their interaction with the communist party and their flirtation with wartime espionage. It is a portrait of two ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary events of WWII and the Cold War.

[1] Reviewed in The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies (22, 3, Winter 2016-17, p. 133 ).