Recommended Books on SOE
The books I read for The Highland Raven
Now I’ve finished writing The Highland Raven and sent it off to my editor, let me share with you the books I studied for the 5th book in The Resistance Girl Series. After all, I made a deep-dive into Winston Churchill’s Secret Operations Executive aka SOE.
The Highland Raven is now on preorder
The books below certainly aren’t a comprehensive list on the topic. Thousands of books have been written on SOE as it continuous to fascinate us until today. Maybe they’re also not the best books written on this part of irregular warfare during World War 2, but they were most helpful for my research. Some of them I will reread for the last book in series (The London Agent) where I will return to Great-Britain and SOE. I’ve given the links to the Amazon US store but they’re probably available elsewhere. Just click on the picture to get the link.
Beaulieu: The Finishing School for Secret Agents
This book is the outcome of a difficult investigation, and a very remarkable story it is too. It was at Beaulieu that a large number of agents from Britain and the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe were trained in the delicate arts of secret inks, coding, clandestine communications and black propoganda, along with such nefarious skills as silent killing, housebreaking, safe-blowing, forgery, unattributable sabotage and survival techniques. And they were taught by some extraordinary characters including former spies, a professional burglar and the infamous Kim Philby, who played a significant role in the design of the curriculum.
A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII
From an award-winning journalist comes this real-life cloak-and-dagger tale of Vera Atkins, one of Britain’s premiere secret agents during World War II.
As the head of the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive, Vera Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored special operatives whose job was to organize and arm the resistance in Nazi-occupied France. After the war, Atkins courageously committed herself to a dangerous search for twelve of her most cherished women spies who had gone missing in action. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Sarah Helm chronicles Atkins’s extraordinary life and her singular journey through the chaos of post-war Europe. Brimming with intrigue, heroics, honor, and the horrors of war, A Life in Secrets is the story of a grand, elusive woman and a tour de force of investigative journalism.
The Heroines of SOE: F Section, Britain's Secret Women in France
Britain’s war in the shadows of male spies and subterfuge in the heart of occupied France is a story well known, but what of the women who also risked their lives for Britain and the liberation of France? In 1942 a desperate need for new recruits, saw SOE turn to a previously overlooked group – women. These extraordinary women came from different backgrounds, but were joined in their idealistic love of France and a desire to play a part in its liberation. They formed SOE’s F Section. From the famous White Mouse, Nancy Wake, to the courageous, Noor Inayat Khan, they all risked their lives for King, Country and the Resistance. Many of them died bravely and painfully, and often those who survived, like Eileen Nearne, never told their stories, yet their secret missions of intelligence-gathering and sabotage undoubtedly helped the Resistance to drive out their occupiers and free France. Here, for the first time is the extraordinary account of all forty SOE F women agents. It is a story that deserves to be read by everyone.
Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code Maker's War 1941-45 (Espionage)
In 1942, with a black-market chicken under his arm, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went to war. He was twenty-two and a cryptopgraher of genius. In Between Silk and Cyanide, his critically acclaimed account of his time in SOE, Marks tells how he revolutionised the code-making techniques of the Allies, trained some of the most famous agents dropped into France including Violette Szabo and 'the White Rabbit', and why he wrote haunting verse including his 'The Life that I have' poem. He reveals for the first time the disastrous dimensions of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland; how the Germans were fooled into thinking a Secret Army was operating in the Fatherland itself, and how and why he broke General de Gaulle's secret code. Both thrilling and poignant, Marks's book is truly one of the last great Second World War memoirs.
Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II
She was stunning. She was ruthless. She was brilliant and had a will of iron. Born Vera Maria Rosenberg in Bucharest, she became Vera Atkins. William Stephenson, the spymaster who would later be known as “Intrepid,” recruited her when she was twenty-three.
Vera spent most of the 1930s running too many dangerous espionage missions to count. When World War II began in 1939, her numerous skills made her one of the leaders of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert intelligence agency formed by, and reporting to, Winston Churchill. She trained and recruited hundreds of agents, including dozens of women. Their job was to seamlessly penetrate deep behind the enemy lines.
As General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, the fantastic exploits and extraordinary courage of the SOE agents and the French Resistance fighters “shortened the war by many months.” They are celebrated, as they should be.
But Vera Atkins’s central role was hidden until after she died; author William Stevenson promised to wait and publish her story posthumously. Now, Vera Atkins can be celebrated and known for the hero she was: the woman whose beauty, intelligence, and unwavering dedication proved key in turning the tide of World War II.
SOE: Churchill’s Secret Agents (paperback)
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was one of the most innovative British creations of the Second World War. Its mission was to export resistance, subversion, and sabotage to occupied Europe and beyond, disrupting the German war effort and building a Secret Army which would work in the shadows to help defeat the Nazis. Potential agents were put through intensive paramilitary and parachute training, then taught how to live clandestinely behind enemy lines, to operate radios and write in secret codes. They lived in constant fear of arrest, and of betrayal by treacherous collaborators. This book uses rare images from the collections of The National Archives and the Imperial War Museum to illustrate the lives of the men and women who made up the SOE, their rigorous training, the clever gadgets they used, and their lives behind enemy lines.
