About the Author

An award-winning and highly distinguished documentary film-maker, Leslie Woodhead has written a funny, sad and highly atmospheric memoir of what it was like to be hurled into maturity amidst the peculiar circumstances of the Cold War.

The Story

In the spring of 1956, like two million other men of his generation, the eighteen-year old Leslie Woodhead received a summons to serve Her Majesty. Charting his progress from the austerity of post-war Halifax, via comically bleak RAF training camps and the grim, isolated Joint Services School for Linguistics, My Life As A Spy takes us finally to Berlin and the front line of the Cold War. In the ruins of a city gripped by espionage and paranoia, Leslie Woodhead discovered adulthood and his vocation as an observer and documenter of people.

Reception

A slice of Cold War history and a poignant tale of how our lives can be formed by events and experiences we barely comprehend at the time.

''[a] delightfully irreverent memoir. . . Woodhead''s memories exude a wonderful sense of nostalgia for a world of lost innocence that to anyone over 60 is instantly recognisable'' Sunday Times