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Title: Was this the real 007?
Review: History may judge him harshly, but this book is an incredible adventure story and worth reading for its coverage of Stalin's purges alone. Fitzroy Maclean was apparently Ian Fleming's model for his most famous creation, James Bond. Whether stooging quietly around the back of beyond in Stalin's Soviet Union, sneaking across the Sahara to launch raids far behind German lines in World War Two or hiking through the vertical mountains of Yugoslavia Maclean is both modest and reticent. But the adventures he has are so outrageous that anything but a self-deprecating approach would seem both boastful and wildly improbable. With Eric Newby and Wilfred Thesiger, this man was the last of a particular breed of Englishmen. The world will be a poorer place for their passing.
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