On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy in Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. They took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens.
A tense six-day siege followed as millions of people gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest breaking news in British television history, as police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while Britain's Special Forces—an organization shrouded in secrecy until now—drawn up plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

Drawing on unpublished source material, exclusive interviews with British Special Forces, and testimony from eyewitnesses including hostages, negotiators, intelligence officers, and the on-site psychiatrist, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes readers on a captivating journey from years and weeks of preparation on both sides, to a minute-by-minute account of the siege and rescue.

Through reenactments of the dramatic conversations between negotiators and hostages, the sophisticated intelligence work that took place, "The Siege" is a fascinating story of what really happened in those six fateful days, and the first full-length account of the moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS - and itself.