Will I love Game of Spies?

The late Paddy Ashdown, better known as a Liberal politician in the United Kingdom, wrote several impeccably researched nonfiction books about the Second World War. This one deals with the Special Operations Executive, an area of my own research and writing, and the attempts to catch and imprison its courageous secret agents. As a researcher, I admired the accurate detail, but I also loved also the evocative descriptions of the dangers agents - and the Resistance fighters with whom they worked - faced and the constant tension of their lives. Not a new book, but well worth going back to.

Apart from viewing the late Paddy Ashdown as perhaps the best Prime Minister Britain never had, I also know him as an under-recognised author of gripping Second World War books. The community of WW2 researchers is mutually supportive; knowledgeable colleagues have been immensely helpful to me over the years, and I recall helping Paddy with some information for one of his books. Several of them are worth reading, but here he tells the true stories of three men who pitted their wits against each other in the treacherous milieu of wartime France. The stakes were measured in lives, betrayals, and… show more.