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´A remarkably vivid and authentic chronicler of working-class life in the twentieth century´ Juliet Gardiner

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Soldier, Spy is the astonishing memoir of one ordinary man and soldier, Victor Gregg, as he resumes civilian life after the Second World War. As for so many others, picking up where he had left off proved far from simple for Gregg; he had fought many battles, lost many friends and been deeply damaged psychologically by his experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden.
To escape the memories and the emotional trauma, he moved from one job and distraction to the next: from immersing himself in the adrenaline-fuelled competitive cycling to working as a long distance lorry driver, from becoming a Communist Party member to becoming a spy and, by his seventieth birthday, helping bring about the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This honest and gritty account is the third book in a remarkable trilogy that both explores the permanent and damaging consequences of a life at war and tells the story of one ordinary man who went on to lead the most extraordinary life.

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A gripping life-story: an incident-packed account of heartache, violence and cunning by a man whose will to survive and unbreakable optimism are a true inspiration Independent, on Rifleman

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Gregg, Victor
Victor Gregg was born in London in 1919 and joined the army in 1937, serving first with the Rifle Brigade in India and Palestine, before service in the Western Desert. Later, with the Parachute Regiment, he saw action in Italy and at the Battle of Arnhem, where he was taken prisoner and sentenced to death in Dresden, where, ironically, he was saved from execution by the Allied bombing of the city. He was demobilized in 1946.

He wrote a trilogy of memoirs: King´s Cross Kid, about his working-class childhood in London between the World Wars; Rifleman, about his life on the front line from Alamein and Dresden to the Fall of the Berlin Wall; and Soldier, Spy, about his life as a demobbed soldier returning to civilian life and all the challenges that entailed.

He wrote Dresden, A Survivor´s Story to mark the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden that took place between 13 and 15 February 1945.

Stroud, Rick
Rick Stroud is a writer and television director who has directed such actors as Pierce Brosnan, John Hurt, Ian Holme, David Suchet, Celia Imrie and Joanna Lumley. Earlier in his career he was the associate producer of Brideshead Revisited. He has won an Emmy and been nominated for a BAFTA. He is the author of The Book of the Moon and The Phantom Army of Alamein: How the Camouflage Unit and Operation Bertram Hoodwinked Rommel, and with Victor Gregg has written Rifleman and King´s Cross Kid. He is currently working on a book about the kidnapping by the SOE of General Kreipe from his headquarters on Nazi occupied Crete. He lives in London.

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