Alex Gerlis

Alex Gerlis is a British historical novelist and former BBC journalist whose fiction specialises in espionage during the Second World War. Born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, he worked for the BBC for almost thirty years, beginning as a researcher on Panorama and later editing television news programmes before becoming Head of Training at the BBC College of Journalism. He left the BBC in 2011 to concentrate on writing. His journalism background is reflected in novels that emphasise intelligence networks, political manoeuvring, double agents and the practical mechanics of espionage rather than battlefield action alone.

His novels are organised into several connected wartime spy series. The Spy Masters sequence comprises The Best of Our Spies, The Swiss Spy, Vienna Spies and The Berlin Spies, moving through the Second World War from occupied Europe to Switzerland, Vienna and defeated Germany. The Richard Prince series—Prince of Spies, Sea of Spies, Ring of Spies and End of Spies—follows British intelligence officer Richard Prince through operations stretching from the opening stages of the war to its aftermath. The Wolf Pack Spies novels, beginning with Agent in Berlin, continue with Agent in Peril and Agent in the Shadows, the latter involving the French Resistance and Gestapo operations in Lyon. His newer Double Agent series begins with Every Spy a Traitor, set against Stalin’s purges and the rise of Nazi Germany, followed by The Second Traitor, centred on the invasion threat to Britain in 1940, and City of Traitors, due in August 2026. Across the novels Gerlis combines fictional intelligence officers with real events and organisations, making his work particularly relevant to Second World War espionage, occupied Europe, resistance movements and the early Soviet–Western intelligence struggle.