Outlook
Outlook
A web of spies: Untangling my parents' secret past
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26 June 2025
41 minutes
Available for over a year
Alistair Wood grew up in the UK, behind the very high walls of a Secret Intelligence Service training camp. His mother, who Alistair believed to have been a secretary, was one of a small handful of women to have operated behind the lines in post-war Berlin. His father, J.B. Wood, once one of Britain's most highly-regarded intelligence officers, was an absent and perplexing figure, who had suddenly left the secret service and disappeared from Alistair's life.
When Alistair was a young adult, his father briefly reappeared and brought with him clues to his hidden past, but it wasn't until news of J.B. Wood's death reached Alistair that he finally began to search for answers to a lifetime of secrets. He has written a book about that search called My Family And Other Spies.
Presenter: Asya Fouks
Producer: Thomas Harding Assinder
Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707
(Image: Montage of photographs from Alistair Wood’s family. Credit: Alistair Wood)
