Thursday 11 February, 7.30 pm
Sports Centre Hospitality Suite, Abingdon School
Organised in conjunction with Mostly Books, OA, Times columnist, historian and author, Ben Macintyre, is coming to Abingdon School and will be discussing his new book about an unlikely, yet staggeringly successful, wartime deception that changed the course of World War II - 'Operation Mincemeat'.
Ben was the author of the bestselling book 'Agent Zigzag', the story of wartime double agent Eddie Chapman (currently in production as a film to be produced by Tom Hanks and released next year). As unlikely as Eddie's life was, the story of Operation Mincemeat is even more bizarre - and the stakes much higher.
One April morning in 1943, a sardine fisherman spotted the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and set in a train a course of events that would hoodwink 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.
This 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, a transvestite English spymaster, an irascible admiral who loved fly-fishing, a dead Welsh tramp - as well as novelists Ian Fleming and John le Carre to dream up the whole plot.
The story reads like something from one of their novels, but also gives a fascinating insight into the often bizarre and daring strategies used during World War II in the often deadly cat and mouse games played between the British and German secret services across Europe.
Ben weaves together private documents, photographs, memories, letters and diaries, as well as newly released material from the intelligence files of MI5 and Naval Intelligence, in a exiting wartime adventure that is even better for being true.
Reviews so far for Operation Mincemeat:
- The complexities and consequences of the story that Macintyre tells in Operation Mincemeat are compelling - a tribute to his impressive abilities as a sleuth…and to his capacities as a writer - William Boyd, The Times
- Ben Macintyre turns up trumps in this rollicking tale of a second world war mission to dupe the Germans by using a corpse bearing fictional military plans. - Max Hastings, Sunday Times
Come along and hear Ben talk about his book. Entry is by ticket only - price £5 (which includes drinks on arrival and a discount on the book). Tickets are available from:
Mostly Books, 36 Stert Street, Abingdon OX14 3JP
Tel: 01235 525880
email: books@mostly-books.co.uk
