In the 1970s, a network of radical extremists terrorised the West with plane hijackings and hostage-takings. Among them were the beautiful young Leila Khaled with her jewellery made from grenade rings, the hard-drinking philanderer Carlos the Jackal sporting shades and open-neck shirts, and the radical leftists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. They sought to liberate the Palestinians and overthrow western imperialism, orchestrating spectacularly violent attacks that held governments to ransom and the world gripped to their television screens.
Drawing on decades of research, declassified archive material and original interviews with witnesses and participants, Jason Burke provides a masterful account of their exploits over the course of this dark decade. From Dawson's Field and the Munich Olympics to the Iranian Embassy Siege in London and the Beirut bombings of the early 1980s, he takes us into the lives and minds of the perpetrators of these attacks, as well as the government agents who sought to thwart and assassinate them. In the process, he shows how the extreme fringe of a secular, leftist, revolutionary movement ultimately birthed something altogether different and far more lethal: the violent expression of a fanatically conservative religious zealotry.
Gripping, globe-spanning and pulsing with drama, The Revolutionaries is the definitive account of the decade when terrorism took to the skies and transformed the world.
** LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2025 **
A thrilling and unprecedented account of the radicalism and political extremism that gripped the 1970s - a seismic decade that transformed the modern world.
'Brilliant ... An astonishing window not just into the origins of modern terrorism but also into our own age' RORY STEWART
'Extraordinary ... told with cool authority and a novelist's eye for detail' RORY CARROLL, author of Killing Thatcher
In the 1970s, a network of extremists terrorised the West with intricately planned plane hijackings and hostage-takings. Among them were the glamorous Leila Khaled, hard-drinking Carlos the Jackal, and radical leftists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. United by their hatred of Israel, capitalism and 'Western imperialism', they unleashed a series of audacious attacks that brought governments to their knees and glued the world to their tv screens.
Drawing on decades of research, recently declassified government files, secret documents, and first-hand interviews with hijackers, spies, witnesses and victims, Jason Burke takes us inside these often-deadly operations. Through the perpetrators' eyes - and of the unrelenting agents who hunted them down - he uncovers a dark, complex world of loyalty, betrayal and commitment to change at any cost.
Pitching us into these tumultuous times, The Revolutionists reveals how a campaign led by secular leftist revolutionaries gave way to a far more lethal movement of conservative religious fanaticism that would dominate the decades to come. It is impossible to understand the world today without reading this book.
'A book that historians will be profiting from for many decades to come' TOM HOLLAND
'As compelling as the best of spy thrillers' FERGAL KEANE, BBC Correspondent and author of The Madness
'Riveting' LINDSEY HILSUM, International Editor, Channel 4 News
