Queen of Spies: Daphne Park, Britain's Cold War Spy Master - Softcover

Fascinating and long-overdue

[A]n excellent biography of a remarkable woman...As exciting as any good spy thriller--but it's all true.

Hayes is open about his own speculations, given the still-classified nature of much of this material, but he successfully conveys the inspiring nature of Park's personal story and achievements, offering an informative account of the Cold War and the workings of the supersecret SIS.

In a series of vignettes, the author tells a dramatic story that he gathered over five decades of researching the shadowy world of intelligence and those who survived it as an occupation. Miss Park's achievements were remarkable.

In his richly entertaining biography, Hayes describes how she once smuggled a man whose life was in danger out of the Congo in the boot of her car. She spent part of the second world war training Special Operations Executive agents before they were dropped by parachute into occupied France.

From living in a tin-roofed shack north of Dar-es-Salaam to attaining the British Secret Intelligence Service’s most senior operational rank, Daphne Park led a highly unusual life. In the 1970s, she was appointed to Secret Intelligence Service’s most senior operational rank as one of its seven Area Controllers—an unprecedented achievement for a woman working within this most male-dominated and secretive of organizations.In Queen of Spies, Paddy Hayes recounts the fascinating story of the evolution of the SIS from World War II to the Cold War through her eyes, providing the reader with an intimate narrative of how the modern SIS actually went about its business, and shows how Park was able to rise through the ranks of a field was comprised almost entirely of men. Queen of Spies captures all the paranoia, isolation, and deception of Cold War intelligence work, and unveils all that it may be possible to know about the life of one of Britain’s most celebrated spies—an extraordinary woman trying to navigate a secretive world.