'An astonishing true story of courage love and betrayal told with the verve of a thriller.
Freedland is a master ' MICK HERRON 'This remarkable book reads like a novel . . . The
narrative style is gripping the morality searing. This is how the best history books will be
written in the future' ANDREW ROBERTS 'Excellent . . . both history and parable perfect
reading for this moment ' ANNE APPLEBAUM ' Utterly gripping brilliantly researched and
written' ANTHONY HOROWITZ ' Thrilling humane and deeply moving . . . the best sort of
history one whose rich characters breathe life and perspective into our present circumstance.
Haunting and not to be missed' DAVID McCLOSKEY ' The Traitors Circle rivals Freedland's
superb The Escape Artist . Totally gripping and timely ' JONATHAN DIMBLEBY ' Haunting and
heart-poundingly suspenseful . . . Freedland's powerful story-telling has intense resonance in
today's darkening world' SINCLAIR MCKAY 'As tense as a thriller yet perceptive thoughtful
and thoroughly researched' KATJA HOYER 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 Führer'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?
