Overview

THE SUNDAY TIMES NO 1. BESTSELLER 'Astonishing . . . Sheds riveting new light on this breathtaking plan' Daily Mail 'A rollicking read' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'Brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining' Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker ____________________ April, 1943: a sardine fisherman spots the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and sets off a train of events that would change the course of the Second World War. Operation Mincemeat was the most successful wartime deception ever attempted. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different from any spy before or since: he was dead. His mission: to convince the Germans that instead of attacking Sicily, the Allied armies planned to invade Greece. The brainchild of an eccentric RAF officer and a brilliant Jewish barrister, the great hoax involved an extraordinary cast of characters including a famous forensic pathologist, a gold-prospector, an inventor, a beautiful secret service secretary, a submarine captain, three novelists, an irascible admiral who loved fly-fishing, and a dead Welsh tramp. This is the true story of the most extraordinary deception ever planned by Churchill's spies: an outrageous lie that travelled from a Whitehall basement all the way to Hitler's desk.

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9781526682574

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Reviews

Praise for Agent Zigzag: ‘Superb. Meticulously researched, splendidly told, immensely entertaining and often very moving' * John le Carré * ‘A fascinating biography of this most astonishing and insouciant of double agents ... incredible' * William Boyd * 'This is the most amazing book, full of fascinating and hair-raising true life adventures ... it would be impossible to recommend it too highly' * <i>Mail on Sunday</i> * ‘It is unlikely that a more engaging study of espionage and deception will be published this year' * <i>The Times</i> *

A rollicking read for all those who enjoy a spy story so fanciful that Ian Fleming - himself an officer in Montagu's wartime department - would never have dared to invent it -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times * Ben Macintyre, also the author of the acclaimed Agent Zigzag, is fast becoming a one-man industry in these updated tales of cunning, bravery and skulduggery. With his mix of meticulous research and a good hack's eye for narrative, it is hard to think of a better guide to keep beckoning us back to that fascinating world * Observer * Macintyre has a journalist's nose for a great story, and a novelist's skill in its narration ... Even more spellbinding than his previous story of wartime espionage, Agent Zigzag, with a cast-list every bit as dotty and colourful ... Macintyre is a master of the thumbnail character sketch * Mail on Sunday * With its fantastic plot and its cast of eccentric characters, the book reads like the most improbable of spy stories. It is a tribute to Macintyre's skill that we never for a moment forget that it is actually all true * Daily Telegraph * Astonishing ... Sheds riveting new light on this breathtaking plan * Daily Mail * Brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining -- Malcolm Gladwell * New Yorker *

Author Information

Ben Macintyre is a columnist and Associate Editor on The Times. He has worked as the newspaper's correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. He is the author of seven previous books including Agent Zigzag, the story of wartime double-agent Eddie Chapman, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Galaxy British Book Award for Biography of the Year 2008. He lives in London with his wife and three children.

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