Book description
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Why read it?
2 authors picked Between Silk and Cyanide as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I have always been fascinated by secret undercover operations and by the Second World War.
The two are meshed in this autobiography of a young cryptographic genius who was recruited into the SOE to help sort out our coding disasters and improve security for the agents. It is brilliantly funny, savage, and desperately moving.
His poem, "The Life That I Have, Is All That I Have" was written for his fiancée who was killed. He later gave it to Violette Szabo (see Carve Her Name with Pride) to encode her messages undercover in France before her capture and death.…
From Elizabeth's list on Elizabeth Buchan's favourite books that will push you to be bold and brave and to never give up.
A thrilling personal account by the brilliant cryptographer, Leo Marks, who was only 22 when employed by the SOE. It was Marks who gave the special codes to famous SOE agents like Violette Szabo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Nancy Wake before they left for the field. An insight into how the code war between Germany and England played out, often with disastrous consequences.
From Shrabani's list on The best books on secret agents and espionage in WW2.
If you love Between Silk and Cyanide...
Return to Vienna
"Captain Charles Kennedy" parachuted into a moonlit Austrian forest and searched frantically for his lost radio set. His real name was Leo Hillman and he was a Jewish refugee from Vienna. He was going home. Men and women of Churchill’s secret Special Operations Executive worked to free Austria from Hitler's…
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