For the first time since he was released from five years' incarceration in some of Africa's toughest prisons, making worldwide headlines, Simon Mann breaks his silence to tell everything

Simon Mann's remarkable firsthand account of his life reads like a thriller, taking readers into the world of mercenaries and spooks, of murky international politics, big oil and big bucks, action, danger, love, despair, and betrayal. On March 7, 2004, former SAS soldier and mercenary Simon Mann prepared to take off from Harare International Airport. His destination was Equatorial Guinea; his was intention to remove one of the most brutal dictators in Africa in a privately organized coup d'etat. The plot had the tacit approval of Western intelligence agencies and Mann had planned, overseen, and won two wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. So why did it go so wrong? Here he reveals the full involvement of Mark Thatcher in the coup d'etat, the endorsement of a former prime minister, and the financial involvement of two internationally famous members of the House of Lords. He also discusses how the British government approached him in the months preceding the Iraq War, to suggest ways in which a justified invasion of Iraq could be engineered. He also discusses the pain of telling his wife Amanda, who gave birth to their fourth child while he was incarcerated, that he believed he would never be freed.