The Spycatcher Trial

Book excerpt: Peter Wright’s Spycatcher received more legal attention than any other book in history. What started as an attempt by the Secret Service to muzzle a former M15 officer ended with the British Government on trial in Australia. The 1986 case made Spycatcher an international bestseller. And it made the young lawyer who had turned the ‘impossible’ case in Wright’s favour – Malcolm Turnbull – an international sensation. In The Spycatcher Trial, originally released in 1988, Turnbull gives a full account of arguably the highest-profile Australian case of all time, discussing Wright’s motives in publishing his dossier of facts and those of Margaret Thatcher and the British Government in relentlessly pursuing it. Above all, Turnbull recreates the drama of the trial that caught the imagination of the world and changed the life of the man who would become Australia’s 29th Prime Minister.