SOE
Out of the shadows
Unlike his attention-seeking brother David Stirling, Bill was a careful planner, responsible for many successful intelligence-gathering operations behind enemy lines
Behind the Five Eyes intelligence alliance
In February 1941 four US officers were landed from a British warship at Sheerness, bundled into vehicles and driven to…
Has the role of resistance in the second world war been exaggerated?
When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…
Break-out and betrayal in Occupied Europe
Für dich, Tommy, ist der Krieg vorbei. However, many British servicemen, officers especially, didn’t want their war to be over.…
The Lady with the Limp: homage to the one-legged Virginia Hall, SOE’s ‘most dangerous’ agent
‘This seems to be in your rough area. I mean, it contains wooden legs and everything…’ my commissioning editor at…
The history of Britain’s secret war on Napoleon is astonishing, inspiring and disturbing
Laws and sausages, we know, are better not seen in the making; and neither are ‘black ops’. Waterloo may have…
His own worst enemy
One fail-safe test of a writer’s reputation is to see how many times his or her books get taken out…
James Klugmann and Guy Burgess: the wasted lives of spies
Geoff Andrews’s ‘Shadow Man’, James Klugmann, was the talent-spotter, recruiter and mentor of the Cambridge spy ring. From 1962, aged…
Spies in the spotlight
Spying is a branch of philosophy, although you would never guess it from that expression on Daniel Craig’s face. Its…
Patrick Leigh Fermor and the long, daft tradition of Brits trying to save Greece
Twenty-odd years ago, while on holiday in the deep Mani at the foot of the Peloponnese, I got into conversation…
The Italians who won the war – against us
Italy entered the second world war in circumstances very similar to those in which it signed up for the first.…
She Landed by Moonlight, by Carole Seymour-Jones - review
The subtitle of Carole Seymour-Jones’s quietly moving biography of the brilliant SOE agent Pearl Witherington is ‘the real Charlotte Gray’.…
