Damien Lewis
The best-selling author, historian, and film-maker on untold stories, personal heroes, and dream movie castings.
espionage
A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe’s Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence
Barely a pistol shot from my house on the Isle of Skye is Flora MacDonald’s grave. I’ve had reason to study her, the ‘Preserver of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’ (Bonnie Prince Charlie) as her monument tells me, because an Englishman…
In Brief
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history releases.
MHM 151 Competition
Put your military history knowledge to the test with our competition.
The White Lady: the story of two key British secret service networks behind German lines
REVIEW BY TAYLOR DOWNING Helen Fry has specialised in fascinating and revealing histories of wartime intelligence and espionage, especially of the role of women in these activities. Women in Intelligence, The Walls Have Ears, and Spymaster are a few of…
Mavericks: empire, oil, revolution and the forgotten battle of World War One
REVIEW BY JONATHAN EATON Despite the vast literature on the First World War, there remain important aspects of the conflict that have yet to be fully explored. In recent years, a series of valuable treatises have expanded our understanding of…
New museum of military intelligence planned for Blitz tunnels
Plans have recently been announced for a new museum of military intelligence inside an underground tunnel complex in central London, dating to the Second World War. The Kingsway Exchange Tunnels were built in Holborn between 1940 and 1942 as deep-level…
New London spy museum appoints its first director
A new museum dedicated to the spies who uncovered many enemy secrets during the Second World War has appointed its first director. Giuseppe Albano was recently named as the head of Trent Park House of Secrets, which is due to…
War of Words – ‘Sabotage’
With Marc DeSantis
The Last Days of Budapest: spies, Nazis, rescuers, and resistance, 1940-1945
REVIEW JONATHAN EATON In reading about the Second World War, it is easy to lose sight of the brutal realities of the conflict, whether revealed through acts of unfathomable evil or deeds of immense personal courage. In The Last Days…
George Cross of ‘courageous’ WWII spy Noor Inayat Khan goes on display
The George Cross that was awarded posthumously to a Second World War spy has gone on display in a new exhibition in London. Noor Inayat Khan served in occupied Paris with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) before ultimately giving…
Helen Fry
The historian and best-selling author on her obsession with espionage, and why she will always admire Edith Cavell.
War on Film – The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
TAYLOR DOWNING reviews the latest film releases
MHM 141 Competition
Put your military history knowledge to the test with our competition.
Agent Zo: the untold story of fearless WWII resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka
REVIEW BY ANDREW MULHOLLAND This latest book from biographer Clare Mulley goes way beyond the astonishing life story of Elżbieta Zawacka. For it also provides an important overview of 20th-century Poland, as well as a reminder of the horrors of…
The spies who never were
In the third part of our series on deception in World War II, Taylor Downing uncovers the true story of double agents Brutus and Garbo.
The corpse that fooled Hitler
In the second part of our series on the use of deception during World War Two, Taylor Downing uncovers the extraordinary true story of Operation Mincemeat.
Mosquito: the RAF’s legendary wooden wonder and its most extraordinary mission
REVIEW BY COLIN POMEROY Despite the title of this book, there is little detail about the Mosquito’s development or performance within its pages. But that is the only disappointment, for Rowland White’s new history of the ‘wooden wonder’ is otherwise…
Women in Intelligence: The hidden history of two World Wars
REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON Mata Hari was the ultimate femme fatale. The Dutch-born exotic dancer and courtesan was famously beautiful and enigmatic, and equally notorious for her many affairs – often with military officers. But Mata Hari led a double…
English Civil War cipher belonging to Cromwell ally goes on display
A cipher belonging to an ally of Oliver Cromwell early in the English Civil War has gone on display for the first time. The document, dating from the 1640s and rediscovered only last year, is being featured as part of…
WAR ON FILM – Operation Mincemeat
The newly released, star-studded British movie Operation Mincemeat is, on one level, about the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. On another, more profound level, it is about how people deceive one another. In its opening commentary, the film announces…
Munich – The Edge of War
George MacKay (pictured) once again demonstrates he has the face of a wartime hero in this new adaptation of the bestselling book by Robert Harris, screened initially at the BFI London Film Festival last year and now on general release.
New film depicts Allies’ legendary ‘Mincemeat’ deception
Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen star in this retelling of the 1943 Allied plan to keep the invasion of Sicily a secret
Stalin’s War
This book convincingly argues that Stalin’s war began long before the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, and can really be said to have begun in the late 1920s. Initially, this was a war of suppression at home, combined…
Secret Alliances
It is one of the great ‘what ifs?’ of World War II. What would have happened had the Nazis acquired a nuclear weapon? The consequences are unthinkable. The sabotaging of the Nazi nuclear programme was therefore one of the most…
Mission France
Despite the deserved praise for Special Operations Executive members Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan, many of its other agents are forgotten. Kate Vigurs here attempts to redress the balance, looking at the widely varying experiences of all 39 women…
Fleming’s War
With the latest James Bond blockbuster out next year, MHM assistant editor Calum Henderson explores the life of the man who created him: Ian Fleming, whose wartime adventures rivalled those of 007 himself.
News in brief
National Trust report on colonialism The National Trust has released their Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, including Links with Historic Slavery (read more in ‘Sherds’ on p.64). Commissioned…