reviews

Sarah Rose, D-Day Girls (Crown, 2019) Sabotage and intelligence: meet the women who made D-Day happen

Volker Weidermann, Dreamers (Pushkin,2019) The Free State of Bavaria: the extraordinary rise and fall of the ‘writers’ republic’

Corey Mead, The Lost Pilots (Macmillan, 2018)Aviation’s first love triangle scandal: The story of The Lost Pilots

Brunholde Pomsel, Thore Hansen, The Work I Did (Bloomsbury, 2018)‘I don’t feel guilty. Why would I?’: the chilling memories of Goebbels’s secretary

Inara Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead (One, 2018)

Benny Morris, Sidney Reilly, Master Spy (Yale, 2023) Sidney Reilly, Ace of Spies remains an engima

Ben Macintyre, Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle (Viking, 2022) The sheer tedium of life at Colditz

Anne Sebba, Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy (W&N, 2021) The great betrayal of Ethel Rosenberg

Judy Batalion, The Light of Days: Women Fighters of the Jewish Resistance (Virago, 2021) The defiance of the ‘ghetto girls’ that resisted the Nazis

Judith Mackrell, Going With the Boys (Picador, 2021) Out-scooping the men: six women reporters of the Second World War

Roland Philipps, Agent Victoire (Vintage, 2021) Sleeping with the enemy; the wartime story of French triple agent ‘La Chatte’

Ben Macintyre, Agent Sonia (Viking, 2020) The pram in the hall was one spy’s best friend…

Keith Lowe, Prisoners of History (William Collins, 2020) Monuments to the Second World War are looking increasingly dodgy

Caroline Moorhead, A House in the Mountains (chatto & WIndus, 2019) Female partisans played a vital role in fighting fascism in Italy — but it was a thankless task

Henry Hemming, Our Man in New York (Quercus, 2019) How Britain conned the US into entering the war

Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance (Virago, 2020) The Lady with the Limp: homage to the one-legged Virginia Hall, SOE’s ‘most dangerous’ agent

Penny Perrick, Telling Tales (Bloomsbury, 2018) Anita Leslie: sparkling socialite with the Croix de Guerre

Matthew Sweet, Operation Chaos (Picador, 2018) The CIA, the Vietnam deserters and the aptly named Operation Chaos

Rick Stroud, Lonely Courage (Simon & Schuster, 2017) Six of the best female spies in Nazi-occupied France

Serhii Plokhy, The Man With the Poison Gun (Oneworld, 2016) Bogdan Stashinsky: the inspiration for The Man with the Golden Gun

Antony Beevor, Ardennes 1944 (Viking, 2015) Mud, blood and war crimes on both sides – the struggle for the Ardennes was one of the bitterest of the second world war

Anne Sebba, Les Parisiennes (W&N, 2016) Keeping up appearances in 1940s Paris

Thomas Harding, The House on the Lake (WIndmill, 2015) ‘The History of Modern Germany Within Four Walls’

Saul David, Operation Thunderbolt (H&S, 2015) Was Operation Thunderbolt the most daring mission in history?

Paddy Ashdown, The Cruel Victory (WIlliam Collins, 2015) Reliving the most famous last stand of the French Resistance

Edward Stourton, Cruel Crossing (Doubleday, 2013) ‘Cruel Crossing: Escaping Hitler Across the Pyrenees’, by Edward Stourton – review

Deborah McDonald & Jeremy Dronfield, A Very Dangerous Woman (Oneworld, 2015) The spy who loved (a lot): Moura Budberg’s life reads like a thriller — and may have been more interesting than she was herself

Carole Seymour-Jones, She Landed by Moonlight (H&S, 2013) She Landed by Moonlight, by Carole Seymour-Jones – review

Serinity Young, Women Who Fly (OUP, 2018) An enthralling study of the power of aerial women and their challenge to patriarchy

Françoise Frenkel, No Place to Lay One’s Head (Pushkin 2018) A Jewish woman’s journey through Nazi Germany and Vichy France to safety in Switzerland

Mary Ellis, Melody Foreman, A Spitfire Girl (Frontline, 2016) No Husband Needed – I Fly a Spitfire

Giles Milton, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (John Murray, 2016) ‘Churchill’s Mavericks: Plotting Hitler’s Downfall’

Dermot Turing, PROF, Alan Turing Decoded (Pitkin, 2015)

Sophie de Schaepdrijver, Gabrielle Petit, The Death and Life of a Female Spy in the First World War (Bloomsbury, 2015)

Jason Webster, The Spy With 29 Names (Chatto & Windus, 2014) The Spy with 29 Names

Robyn Walker, The Woman who Spied for Britain (Amberley, 2014)

Miranda Seymour, Noble Endeavours (S&S, 2013)

R.J. Minney, Carve Her Name with Pride (Pen & Sword, 2012)

Barnard O’Connor, Agent Rose (Amberley, 2012)

Bernared O’Connor, Women of RAF Tempsford (A,berley, 2011)