The Book Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in and around the Fens; Glenda Goulden; Wharncliffe Books, Barnsley, South Yorkshire. 2008. Review Every once in a while, I come across a “true crime” book that makes me shudder, not because of the gory crime scenes but because of the poor research. This is one such book. […]
The Book Operation Sealion: How Britain Crushed the German War Machine’s Dreams of Invasion in 1940; Leo McKinstry; John Murray, London. 2014. Summary In the summer and fall of 1940, England was faced with the very real threat of a German invasion. Pushed off of the Continent by the German Army, the Allied forces were
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The Book Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture. Ian Cobain. Portobello Books, London. 2012. Summary Since the tragedy of 9/11, there has been much in the news about the war on terror, and the questionable interrogation methods used by the United States of America. While many point fingers at the United States, Great Britain
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The Book Execution: A History of Capital Punishment in Britain. Simon Webb. The History Press. Stroud, Gloucestershire. 2012. Summary [Disclaimer – I did not read the entire book, only the sections on Josef Jakobs and Karel Richter] The author of this book takes a look at the various methods of execution used throughout Britain’s history.
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The Book Fighting to Lose: How the German Secret Intelligence Service helped the Allies win the Second World War. John Bryden. Dundurn. 2014. Summary There have been many books written about the triumph of the British double-cross system run by MI5 during World War II. The inept German Abwehr (German Secret Intelligence Service) sent poorly
The Book In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention without Trial in Wartime Britain. A.W. Simpson. Clarendon Press. 1984. Review This book was riveting and eye-opening. It is perhaps best encapsulated by a quote from Churchill, part of which forms the title of the book: The Power of the Executive to cast a man into prison
The Book Unternehmen Seelöwe: Widerstand im deutschen Geheimdienst [Operation Sealion: Resistance in the German Intelligence Service]. Monika Siedentopf. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 2014. Review In the last year I have read several English-language books which have suggested that during World War 2, the German Intelligence Service (Abwehr), far from being stupid and incompetent, actively undermined
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The Book Banged Up: Doing Time in Britain’s Toughest Jails. David Leslie. Black & White Publishing, 2014. Review According to the publisher’s website, David Leslie “was a senior journalist with the News of the World for over forty years, latterly as Scottish Crime Editor. He is the author of several books including Crimelord, the story
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The Book Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies, Lt Col. R.W.G. Stephens, introduced and edited by Oliver Hoare, Public Record Office, 2000. Review This book might not be what you would expect, in that it is not a “book” per se. In the 1990s, MI5 declassified a document entitled A Digest of Ham written
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The Book Historical Dictionary of World War II Intelligence, Nigel West, Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland, 2007. Review As the name indicates, this is dictionary style book that gives short summaries of various people and places related to World War II Intelligence. This style of book is generally a great reference resource, with a myriad number
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