Cover image of "The Siege," about a hostage crisis in London in 1980.

Six months after fanatical Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans hostage, another group invaded the Iranian Embassy in London. This kicked off a tense six-day standoff between London police and hostage-takers that dominated the news in Britain and the Continent. But we here in the United States knew little or nothing about the event. After all, we had our own problems with a hostage crisis. So, it may have escaped our attention that the hostage-takers at Iran’s Embassy in London were, in fact, Iranian themselves. But they were Iranian Arabs, activists from an enclave in southwest Iran they called Arabistan (though few others did). They seized the embassy to gain the world’s attention to the oppression of their people by the Ayatollah’s government. Author Ben Macintyre dramatizes this story in The Siege, his breathless, day-by-day account of the crisis.

Drama from beginning to end

Reviewers (and writers of book blurbs) often shout out that a nonfiction book “reads like a thriller.” Sometimes one does. Often not. But The Siege really does so. And if you know little or nothing about the 1980 hostage drama in London, you’re in luck. Don’t Google it. Because the only spoiler you need to appreciate the story lies in the book’s subtitle when it refers to “the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World.” That’s unavoidable, since the author or his publisher chose to blast it out for all to see on the cover. But that leaves lots of room for surprises. Ben Macintyre is a masterful writer whose books on espionage and war are invariably suspenseful to a fault. Treat yourself to this one if you true crime stories and thrillers that truly thrill.

The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World by Ben Macintyre (2024) 379 pages ★★★★★

Photo of Guardian front page about the hostage crisis
Front page of Britain’s Guardian newspaper with a sensational story about the Iranian embassy seizure, typical of the country’s news coverage during the days of the crisis. Image: The Guardian

Perspective on the events from all quarters

In telling this story, Macintyre methodically follows the course of events day by day—and hour by hour during critical periods. Given the disparity of his sources, which include court testimony, police reports, stories in the press, and interviews with participants, the author demonstrates his chops with plotting as he lays it all out in chronological order. And all along the way the scene shifts from inside the embassy to the police and special forces on the ground outside, to Metropolitan Police headquarters, and to the rarified heights of the COBRA Committee. Because throughout the crisis, the person ultimately calling the shots was Margaret Thatcher, who had been in office less than a year. The prospects for her career rested on the outcome of this hostage crisis.

I listened to the audio recording of The Siege, narrated by Ben Macintyre himself. (He’s a natural, and his voice is pleasant.) The authenticity of the storytelling lends an added dimension to the recording. And it’s sometimes amusing to hear the author’s personal commentary on the event. Clearly, he wrote for a British audience. The evidence lies in comments such as this one, referring to the SAS unit on the scene: “This was a cracking good bunch of blokes.” Indeed, it was.

About the author

Photo of Ben Macintyre, author of this book about the 1980 hostage crisis in London
Ben Macintyre. Image: Justine Stoddart – Penguin Random House

Ben Macintyre is the author of at least 14 books on espionage, biography, and war. Five of his books have been made into documentaries for the BBC. Macintyre was born in Oxford, England, in 1963. His father was a prominent Oxford history don, his mother a minor aristocrat. But he attended Cambridge University, not Oxford, earning a degree in history there in 1985. Macintyre is divorced, the father of three children.

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