![]() JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?īM: I would love to think I would have made a good spy, but on reflection, having been immersed in this world for nearly eight years, I think I would be hopeless at intelligence work- an inability to keep a secret being one of my main failings. And of course, in relying on these five spies, they were dealing with extremely unconventional, not to say fickle people. If it had gone wrong - as it very nearly did - then thousands of lives were at stake. JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?īM: I was most surprised by the gamble which the D-Day planners were prepared to take with the "Double Cross" ruse. The story of Double Cross, the great hoax that ensured the success of D-Day, is not so much a military history as a story of people, and the subtle interplay between spies and spymasters, both Allied and German. Espionage offers such an extraordinary backdrop for studying character, personality and issues of loyalty, love and betrayal. Three books later, Double Cross is the summation of that research. ![]() I was first inspired to write on this subject with the release of the files on Eddie Chapman, code-named Agent Zigzag, a conman and criminal who became one of the most successful double agents of the war. ![]() ![]() ![]() Ben Macintyre: The release of the official, hitherto top secret files on wartime espionage has transformed this area of intelligence history. ![]()
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