The Siege: 'fresh and gripping' account of the Iranian embassy hostage crisis

Ben Macintyre has produced a 'masterful' narrative of the real-life 1980 drama

Book cover of The Siege by Ben Macintyre
The book captures the 'complex power-relationships' inside the embassy
(Image credit: Penguin Random House)

"For those of us of a certain age (62, since you ask), the extraordinary events of 5 May 1980 will remain indelibly etched on our memories," said Andrew Anthony in The Observer.

That day, the SAS stormed the Iranian embassy in London – ending a six-day siege that had begun when six gunmen entered the embassy, taking 26 hostages, four of them Britons. Now, the nation watched "transfixed" as "mysterious" black-clad figures in balaclavas smashed their way into the stuccoed building before killing five of the gunmen and liberating 24 of the hostages (one had already been shot dead by the captors; another died during the assault). In those "few action-packed minutes", the SAS "went from obscurity to global renown".

Now Ben Macintyre, a "seasoned documenter of the British establishment's cloaked histories", has produced an "exhaustive" and "gripping" account of the siege – one that reveals it as a more "complex and thought-provoking" affair than its dramatic denouement suggested.

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But hopes of a peaceful ending to the siege were dashed when a confrontation between some of the gunmen and the embassy's "resident Revolutionary Guardsman" resulted in the latter being shot dead. Minutes later, Thatcher sent in the SAS, who abseiled down from the roof and smashed windows to get in. Macintyre has produced a "masterful" narrative that, despite the many books and films on this topic, still feels "fresh and gripping".

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