The Spy with 29 Names by James Webster: book review

The Spy with 29 Names: The Story of the Second World War’s Most Audacious Double Agent (2014) is the true tale of the Spanish spy Juan Pujol Garcia.

Juan Pujol Garcia (1912-1988) from Barcelona, who pretended to work for the Germans while working for the British to shape the outcome of D-Day in 1944, is regarded as the greatest double agent in history. Working for four years as a spy – known as Garbo by the British and Alaric by the Germans – he maintained a complex group of fictional informants, almost all of them with code names. Germany awarded him the Iron Cross and Britain gave him the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

The difference between Pujol and other double agents is that the others were enemy agents who ‘turned’ to become double agents, whereas Pujol did everything he could to become a double agent – he approached the embassies. He is a likeable person – witty and intelligent, with a mind that was always one step ahead of everyone else.

Webster’s writing is amazing. To pull the complex threads together in a coherent, page-turning account of history is remarkable. Keeping up with the spies, who they are, where they are, and what information they are contributing, is a test of concentration. I didn’t want to miss a sentence in case I lost track of what was happening.

Not only does Webster provide a comprehensive account of Pujol, but also of his wife, and those who worked within his inner circle – such as people in Bletchley Park and MI5 in England, and the intricacies of the strategic war effort.

Pujol had everyone fooled and he did it in a low-profile, understated way, fading into obscurity after the war - until writer and historian Nigel West began to search for him in the 1980s. Webster goes further than others in the past who have written about Pujol. Webster looks at both the English and the German war intelligence, with Spain in between.

It’s fascinating. This is an espionage story better than anyone can make up.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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