The Traitors Circle

The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them

Jonathan Freedland

$55

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

John Murray Publishers Ltd
09 December 2025

History: theory & methods; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Second World War

When the whole world is lying, someone must tell the truth.

Berlin, 1943. A group of high-society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo - revealing their secret to the Nazis' most ruthless detective.

They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador's widow and a pioneering headmistress. Meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Fuhrer's rule, what unites them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance. Or so they believe.

How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap? And who betrayed them?

Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich's cruellest men, they showed a heroism that raises a question with new urgency for our time: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?

PRAISE FOR THE ESCAPE ARTIST:

'Thrilling' Daily Mail

'Gripping' Guardian

'Heartwrenching' Yuval Noah Harari

'Magnificent' Philip Pullman

'Excellent' Sunday Times

'Inspiring' Daily Mail

'An immediate classic' Antony Beevor

'Awe inspiring' Simon Sebag Montefiore

'Shattering' Simon Schama

'Utterly compelling' Philippe Sands

'A must-read' Emily Maitlis

'Indispensable' Howard Jacobson

By: Jonathan Freedland
Imprint: John Murray Publishers Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781399813679
ISBN 10: 1399813676
Pages: 480
Publication Date: 09 December 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and former foreign correspondent. He has been named Columnist of the Year and Commentator of the Year and has won an Orwell Prize for Journalism. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View, as well as two popular podcasts, Politics Weekly America and Unholy, the latter alongside the journalist Yonit Levi. This is his fourth work of non-fiction, the most recent of which is the award-winning The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World. He has written nine thrillers, eight of them under the name Sam Bourne, including The Righteous Men which was a Sunday Times number one bestseller and has sold over two million copies worldwide.