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Operation Mincemeat
- Author
- Ben Macintyre
- Narrator
- Ben Macintyre
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 6 June 2024
- Run Time
- 13 hours 49 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Rating
- 5.0 (2 reviews)
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What to expect
THE 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' Malcolm Gladwell, 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. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different 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.
The brainchild of an eccentric RAF officer and a brilliant Jewish barrister, the 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, three novelists, an irascible admiral who loved fly-fishing, and a dead Welsh tramp.
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.
Critics Review
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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
Sunday Times
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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
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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
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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
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Astonishing ... Sheds riveting new light on this breathtaking plan
Daily Mail
-
Brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining
New Yorker
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
-
5.0 5.0
An superbly researched book full of astonishing facts and humorous anecdotes. Well worth a listen and a hundred times better than the film!
As well as being a great writer, Ben Macintyre is also an excellent reader.PBee 2025-04-30
Details
- Author
- Ben Macintyre
- Narrator
- Ben Macintyre
- Duration
- 13 hours 49 minutes
- Release Date
- 6 June 2024
- ISBN
- 9781526678881
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Military intelligence, Second World War, True war and combat stories
- Rating
- 5.0(2 reviews)
- Narration
- 5.0(2 reviews)
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Operation Mincemeat written and read by Ben Macintyre.THE 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' Malcolm Gladwell, 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. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different 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.The brainchild of an eccentric RAF officer and a brilliant Jewish barrister, the 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, three novelists, an irascible admiral who loved fly-fishing, and a dead Welsh tramp.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.
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