'...this lovely and in places brilliant book is so much about context - about the paths taken by a romantic hero without honour in his own country, or his adopted one - that, though the opposite of sensational, it will be dramatic for anyone who is interested in what happens when a clever, humane individual ploughs into governing society's predicates.' - Julian Evans, Times Literary Supplement Auckland. Cambridge. Moscow. Paris. New Zealand's "most brilliant linguist and ablest foreign envoy". The man who alerted the West to Soviet possession of the atom bomb. The first Allied diplomat to enter and report on the Nazi death camps at the end of the war. General Freyberg's favourite Intelligence officer. Paddy Costello was a scholar, a soldier, a diplomat, a maverick, an exemplary father, a lover of good wine. But was he also a spy? Paddy Costello, the subject of this long-awaited biography, appears in James McNeish's previous work, Dance of the Peacocks: 'I think it's the best book published in New Zealand in the last twenty years.' - Ian Cross in the Dominion Post 'I came to Dance of the Peacocks with high expectations, but they were far exceeded by the book itself. I t held me like a good novel, being beautifully structured and written; moved me more than most novels; and has haunted me since.' - Jon Stallworthy, Wolfson College, Oxford 'Dance of the Peacocks is the work where all of McNeish's gifts come together.' - Lawrence Jones in the Otago Daily Times "A life-enhancing writer" Robert Nye in The Christian Science Monitor (USA)

Author Biography

The author of more than twenty books and plays, James McNeish has received a number of awards and fellowships. His novels include Mackenzie and Lovelock and his non-fiction Art of the Pacific and Dance of the Peacocks.