Böcker av Nicholas Rankin

Nicholas Rankin's revelatory new book, whose cast of characters includes Haile Selassie, Anthony Burgess and General Sikorski, sets Gibraltar in the wider context of the struggle against fascism, from Abyssinia through the Spanish Civil War.

In 1942, Lieutenant-Commander Ian Fleming was personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence - the dynamic figure behind James Bond's fictional chief, 'M'. Here, Fleming had a brilliant idea: why not set up a unit of authorised looters, men who would go in hard with the front-line troops and steal enemy intelligence?Known as '30 Assault Unit', they took part in the major campaigns of the Second World War, landing on the Normandy beaches and helping to liberate Paris. 30AU's final amazing coup was to seize the entire archives of the German Navy - thirty tons of documents. Ian Fleming flew out in person to get the loot back to Britain, where it was combed for evidence to use in the Nuremburg trials. In this gripping and highly enjoyable book, Nicholas Rankin, author of the best-selling Churchill's Wizards, puts 30 Assault Unit's fascinating story in a strategic and intelligence context. He also argues that Ian Fleming's Second World War service was one of the most significant periods of his life - without this, the most popular spy fiction of the twentieth century would not have been written.

Through Europe and America, from the Highlands of Scotland to the islands of the Pacific, this book explores a trail, charting how a Scottish bohemian became an honorary chief among the Samoans, and how a European aesthete turned to Pacific politics.

The real story of how Winston Churchill and the British mastered deception to defeat the Nazis - by conning the Kaiser, hoaxing Hitler and using brains to outwit brawn. By June 1940, most of Europe had fallen to the Nazis and Britain stood alone. So, with Winston Churchill in charge the British bluffed their way out of trouble, drawing on the trickery which had helped them win the First World War. They broadcast outrageous British propaganda on pretend German radio stations, broke German secret codes and eavesdropped on their messages. Every German spy in Britain was captured and many were used to send back false information to their controllers. Forged documents misled their intelligence. Bogus wireless traffic from entire phantom armies, dummy airfields with model planes, disguised ships and inflatable rubber tanks created a vital illusion of strength. Culminating in the spectacular misdirection that was so essential to the success of D-Day in 1944, Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945 is a thrilling work of popular military history filled with almost unbelievable stories of bravery, creativity and deception. Nicholas Rankin is the author of Dead Man's Chest, Telegram From Guernica and Ian Fleming's Commandos. 'This is a story clamouring to be told. We could not have imagined the scope of the inventiveness, the daring of these people's imaginations . . . I could not stop reading this book.' Doris Lessing