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Ben Macintyre

Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II Paperback – 23 Dec. 2021

by Ben Macintyre (Author)

2,793 ratings

in Spanish Historical Biographies

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**Now a major film, starring Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Penelope Wilson, Johnny Flynn and Jason Isaacs**

A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB SELECTION
A 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' 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, and the strangest. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs, sent German troops hurtling in the wrong direction, and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different, in one crucial respect, 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.

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.

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date

23 Dec. 2021
Dimensions

0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 cm
ISBN-10

1526653559
ISBN-13

978-1526653550
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From the Publisher

Now a major film starring Colin Firth

Deception. The Greatest Weapon In War.

1943. The Allies face an impossible challenge; protecting their troops as they plan to break the Reich's grip on occupied Europe with a direct strike on Sicily.

It falls to two remarkable intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), to dream the most inspired disinformation strategy of the war, centred on the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man.

The Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller

"It is a tribute to Macintyre's skill that we never for a moment forget that it is actually all true" Daily Telegraph

Operation Mincemeat was the most successful wartime deception ever attempted, and the strangest. Beginning in April, 1943 with the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain, it set off a train of events that would change the course of the Second World War.

Now a major motion picture starring Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen and Kelly MacDonald, Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat is an astonishing true story that reads like a gripping spy thriller.

Product description

Review

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

Astonishing ... Sheds riveting new light on this breathtaking plan ― Daily Mail

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

Brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining -- Malcolm Gladwell ― New Yorker

Book Description

The thrilling true story of the greatest and most successful wartime deception ever attempted - soon to be a major film, starring Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Penelope Wilson, Johnny Flynn and Jason Isaacs

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing (23 Dec. 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1526653559
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1526653550
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1 in British Historical Biographies from 1901 Onwards
- 1 in Spanish Historical Biographies
- 1 in History of Spain

Customer reviews:
2,793 ratings

About the author

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Ben Macintyre

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Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times of London and the bestselling author of A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.

(Photo Credit: Justine Stoddart)

Customer reviews

5 star		69%
4 star		21%
3 star		7%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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Matthew H

You will not be able to put it down!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 September 2017

Verified Purchase

Being a fan of everything to do with World War Two and studying History in school this book obviously appealed to me for many reasons! I love reading about stories throughout the war and stories about deception truly captivate me. I am very glad I picked this book and dove right in!!

This story is not an untold story, it is about the transformation of an "unknown" corpse into the fictitious Captain William Martin, whose body turns into a body with a reinvented past life (love letters, hobbies and theatre life) then becomes the carrier of misleading information on the forthcoming invasion of Sicily, was deployed, apparently drowned, into the sea off Spain in 1943 as a "Trojan horse" to find its way back to German intelligence. In this story, the body of the homeless Welsh vagrant, Glyndwr Michael, proved so much more worthwhile in death rather than in life. This part of the story alone is fascinating but further more the book is about strange men, and the strange world they inhabited, behind the planning. In this world there was rivalry and ego which was found in abundance in Whitehall in those days. It is safe to say their egos may have got the better of them if it was not for the shared common enemy.

You need to get this book for yourself to understand just how great it is, you will not be able to put it down.

Please click on the “Yes” button below if this review has been helpful thank you

73 people found this helpful

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Cornwallgurl

Hitherto unknown detail on a well known story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 December 2018

Verified Purchase

I was quite young when I read a serialised version of Ewan Montagu's "The Man who Never Was" in my Uncle's Reader's Digest! At some point I saw the film and so when the TV programme featuring Ben Macintyre came on a few years back (after he'd published the book) I rather sniffily commented that what more was there to know? Wrong - Ben Macintyre has a journalist's knack of getting interviews with people who really matter and writing in an entertaining, but accurate manner. I so enjoyed his book on Philby that I decided to revisit this wonderful piece of WWII deception. I remember (again as a child) talking to my father about it and him saying it was one of the finest pieces of deception carried out during the war.

And what a marvellously motley crew of eccentrics they were - like Macintyre I was particularly fascinated by the ungainly but self effacing Charles Cholmondeley, who initially came up with the deception. The fearsome Admiral Godfrey ("M" in the Bond books), Ian Fleming himself flitting through the pages, the splendidly fearless Alan Hillgarth, the attache in Madrid, and last but not least Ewan Montagu himself. I'd forgotten that after the war he became Judge Advocate General of the Fleet. I joined as a Wren Stenographer, recording Courts Martial & Boards of Enquiry, and no President of a Board, or Naval Judge Advocate, ever wanted to invite interest in his proceedings by the dreaded Judge Montagu.

Eccentric (some may say difficult, or just plain bonkers) people often rise to the surface during war - their skills which would be hard to match with peacetime mores find an outlet. Despite his race against time interviewing as many of the original team's survivors or their relatives as he could, Macintyre never satisfactorily concluded whether or not Ivor Montagu betrayed not only his country but his own brother. I felt Macintyre was more than generous to this man. Given that out of all of the protagonists, Ewan Montagu was the keenest to let people know how involved he was it does not seem unreasonable that he may have dropped hints to his brother (his letters to his wife certainly seem to bend the rules requiring the strictest security). Generally this was a generation who really took their wartime vows of secrecy seriously and many refused to discuss what they had done right up to their deaths (Cholmondeley, Hillgarth). Montagu on the other hand, seemed to revel in his fame once he had written the book, and pestered for recognition of the success of the deception right up to his own death. The repulsive Philby slithers through the pages occasionally, moaning about the costs in Madrid (was there nothing he would stop at to betray his fellow countrymen?)

Then there's the fascinating cast of spies in the Iberian peninsula, their German counterparts and the various Spanish Naval personnel who nearly caused the whole operation to stall. Really, you couldn't make them up. I enjoyed this book immensely, and the due recognition given by Macintyre to the actual corpse - a Welsh derelict who committed suicide - was an honourable addition to this astonishing piece of deception.

16 people found this helpful

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boswell57

Ben Macintyre never lets me down

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 November 2019

Verified Purchase

Ben Macintyre never lets me down and I picked Operation Mincemeat when it was a Kindle 99p deal. This is the story of the wartime deception operation better known as The Man Who Never Was, due to the famous book and film of that name. I followed this by re-reading Duff Cooper’s novella Operation Heartbreak, published in 1950. I learned from Macintyre that Cooper’s book was the first public revelation that a dead body, carrying fake documents intended to fool the Germans as to where the invasion of southern Europe would take place, was dropped off the Spanish coast to be discovered. There was a possibility of Cooper being prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act but he said that if charged, he would say that he got the information direct from Churchill. His book is nothing like the truth. Most of the story is about an invented dim but honourable professional soldier, whose body was eventually used. The Man Who Never Was was the work of Ewen Montagu, one of the originators of the plan and was more accurate. Plenty of people objected to this, too but the book became a bestseller.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

A R Cater

Montagu’s book is far more readable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 May 2022

Verified Purchase

I was looking forward to reading this book having read The Man Who Never Was as a schoolboy over 60 years ago. Montagu’s book drives the narrative forward like a Bond novel. By contrast, this book plods along, overwhelming what is a cracking yarn with endless diversions to fill in every detail. Undoubtedly a more accurate and complete telling of the story but it never gripped me with the desire to press on and finish the book. By contrast I re-read The Man Who Never Was recently and finished it in a day. Exhaustive but exhausting.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Barry E. Sheridan

Factual account of one of the most important deceptions used by the Allies during WW2.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 January 2018

Verified Purchase

I recall watching the film 'The Man Who Never Was' years ago, although memories of it were limited to a general appreciation of the story line. This book not only refreshed that recall but did so by providing a comprehensive telling of the facts. A genuinely interesting account of an episode that help reduce the costs of invading Sicily. Well worth the reading.

24 people found this helpful

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Now a major film starring Colin Firth

The Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller

"It is a tribute to Macintyre's skill that we never for a moment forget that it is actually all true" Daily Telegraph

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Ben Macintyre

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