Ben Macintyre
Ben Macintyre
Benedict Richard Pierce Macintyreis a British author, historian, reviewer and columnist writing for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies. He was educated at Abingdon School...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
deception agents secrecy
The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.
real mean sensibility
To disarm while being best armed, out of an elevation of sensibility-that is the means to real peace....
would-be rooms ifs
If you put into one room everyone who considered themselves a Nietzschean, there would be a bloodbath.
war party deception
Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.
senior games what-if
What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.
book men games
The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.
secret telling-stories stories
I love telling stories, and am almost entirely unable to keep a secret.
falling-in-love educational reading
Libraries are not just for reading in, but for sociable thinking, exploring, exchanging ideas and falling in love. They were never silent. Technology will not change that, for even in the starchiest heyday of Victorian self-improvement, libraries were intended to be meeting places of the mind, recreational as well as educational.
almost entirely love stories telling unable
I think I would have been a hopeless spy. I love telling stories and am almost entirely unable to keep a secret.
believed bernard british cross double doubt eisenhower general history including operation pivotal planners played role senior tricky
'What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.
active best dangerous dry espionage ingenuity man played remains sheer strange wartime written
'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.