Secret Agent: The True Story of the Special Operations Executive Book

Published to coincide with the accompanying BBC television series, this is the fascinating, hair-raising, sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragic account of the brave men and women who went behind the lines in Nazi-occupied territory, with a mission to, in Churchill's words, "set Europe ablaze". The scale of their operations was always limited by lack of funds, military hardware, and, most unbelievably of all, by the continual sniping that the SOE suffered from jealous rival special forces, and the sneering suits in Whitehall. Despite such difficulties, however, their range of operations was impressive: from Gorgopotamos in Greece to Bergen in Norway they did indeed do their very best to set Europe ablaze, with what few resources they had, and faced certain torture and death if they were caught. Their greatest impact was in the Balkans, supporting Tito and his partisans against the Germans, but here, as ever in the Balkans, things were always complicated by ethnic rivalries and atrocious massacres of civilians. In the end, though, the greatest value of the SOE was to boost public morale back home, and it did that superbly. David Stafford's account is excellent, the only reservation being that it leaves one wanting more detail and more characterisation about specific missions. One doesn't often get a sense of being there on the front line but, as an introduction to the subject, this is very satisfactory. --Christopher HartRead More