Review: Before Bletchley Park – The Codebreakers of The First World War – by Paul Gannon

I have previously read a lot of material on World War 2 codebreakers and the likes of Alan Turing and their critical work against Enigma and the invention of modern computing during that period. Of course, codebreaking and cryptography is not a new science and has been a critical part of both war and diplomacy since ancient times and has only increased in significance as time progresses. World War 1 is the second biggest conflagration to have occurred on this planet. It is no surprise that codebreaking was a key element to Allied success in this war. The first World War saw the invention of devastating new military tech such as the tank, the machine gun and the use of aircraft. In cryptography and codebreaking there were new technologies and new methods and on both sides a hard fought war was fought in these areas that really tilted the balance in the end on who became victors and who lost the war.

There was a lot of new technology in the period leading up to the war, in particular in the field of communications. Submarine cables for telegraph were still a relatively new phenomenon. Britain’s position as the bridge between Europe and America in the Atlantic, gave it disproportionate power when it came to cross-ocean cable communications. The British could cut off Germany from contacting the Americas and this they did. The Germans were forced to tactically avoid this blockade. They sent ciphered traffic across the British cables where possible. They tried setting up their own systems but achieved little success. They used neutral Madrid to route most of their telegraph traffic. The British allowed some of this as they were tapping all this traffic anyway. Often the Germans were trying to get the Latin American nations involved on their side in the war, the infamous Zimmerman telegram passed through this route where he openly tried to get the Mexican government enrolled in a border conflict with the USA.

German frustrations with British control of communications boiled over into full-scale hostilities. The Royal Navy were another dominant area where the German Navy faced an uphill struggle. The British were in effect starving the Germans into submission and denying them critical supplies, both military and civilian. In addition to communication control there was a full British Navy embargo in operation. What was the Germans’ answer to this? One of the most unpleasant aspects of the war, that did indeed provide the undoing of the German war effort was their submarine war in the Atlantic. They didn’t have the battleships or cruisers to defeat the Royal Navy but their submarine technology was more advanced and they sent U-Boats to attack not just military naval targets but also commercial vessels, of all countries, including neutral nations conducting merchant navy business across the Atlantic. The Kaiser’s hand was forced really and his people demanded action. He quivered throughout, stopping and starting the U-boat programme, bit ultimately public opinion did go in the Germans’ favour and the sinki9ng of the Lusitania was a turning point as it led to America entering the war proper.

It is interesting to note that British dominance in cable technology and communications was in a large part due to a public / private sector link up – The Italian businessman, Marconi, really embedded his business future with the British, providing the Allies with state of the art disruptive cutting edge technology that was the result of his pioneering inventiveness in the area of communication technology.

The office of Room 40, which is what the predecessor to Bletchley Park and GCHQ was known as, started very much as an informal amateur driven organisation and, by the end of World War 1, had suitably ‘professionalized’ and expanded and would later provide the core for many of the essential employees of Bletchley Park during World War 2. It was set up not far from Horseguards Parade in central London. Room 40 was the hub which controlled all the intercepted traffic and where the codebreaking, cryptanalysis and hard graft was done.

A talented bunch of people inhabited Room 40, many amateurs, a lot of women. Specialisation in certain niche areas was the norm. The new technology offered new challenges and I suppose the modern art and science of cryptography was developed in Room 40. Ancient cipher techniques such as the Caesar cipher were still in use. The German naval codebooks and traffic were encrypted using a hybrid mix of substitution and transposition ciphering. It wasn’t all that difficult to work out the German codebooks for seasoned Room 40 staff. Room 40 saw the first modern computer systems introduced. They were pretty rudimentary, based on punch cards but they did cut labour time when it came to data analysis, allowing skilled staff to utilise their time more efficiently.

I am at present a full-time cybersecurity student at Masterschool in Tel Aviv, Israel. We are studying cryptography which has an important role in internet communications – we were playing around on a virtual Enigma machine from World War 2 a few months ago. I have set up https://fourfourcyber.com as a cybersecurity business. What I particularly found intriguing in this book was that it took a detailed investigation into some example codes, seized or intercepted from the Germans and also looks direct at some of the code books. When you run though some examples as laid out by the authors it really helps to understand the exact process that is taking place. I found it pretty amazing understanding how an entire dictionary of a codebook could be constructed from just deciphering or working out a handful of words. Linguistic knowledge and skills were an important asset but fundamentally the whole process of decryption is basically like doing a crossword. In Room 40, as the war progressed these often larger-than-life cryptography eccentrics became better and better at handling German military and diplomatic systems. They were probably killing more German soldiers than any trench warfare and the efforts of Room 40 ultimately brought victory to the United Kingdom and her allies in a terrible conflict. Peace came sooner and the wisdom and knowledge gained from Room 40 was applied directly to the foundations of Bletchley Park and GCHQ, often these organisations being staffed by Room 40 veterans.

Review: MI9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two – by Helen Fry

I randomly found this book on the shelves of Caldicot library. I read a lot of books on U.K. Intelligence services: MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. During the war…. Mt grandfather (GaGa) was in 618 Squadron RAF and 143 Coastal Command. He didn’t really speak to me much about World War 2 itself until quite late on in his life. Typical of an Armed Forces Officer, though, he kept a pristine home and in part of this home, in his back garden, where he had erected a wigwam, at the top of his garden, lay a treasure trove of WW2 memorabilia. The lost fascinating of items to me as a kid were all his ‘secret’ gadgets. He had all these sort of special James Bond Q-like military aids, secret maps, secret compartments. The most fascinating of all his possessions for me was his ‘trick’ compass which was a normal RAF uniform button, which unscrewed to reveal a miniature, fully-working compass. Whenever I visited him I forced him to show me it God knows how many times – with the full story of how, if he was shot down by the Luftwaffe, behind enemy lines, this little compass would help him to escape and evade capture and get home safe and sound. Of course, he was lucky and although he saw a lot of action, he never got downed in Nazi Occupied Europe or in the later stages of the war in Japanese held South East Asia. He always mentioned this secret intelligence service MI9 which was much more powerful and effective and secret than MI5 or MI6 or any others and was the ‘real’ secret’ service but that you wouldn’t read about them in any newspapers etc. I didn’t really pay much attention, just enjoyed the idea of British ingenuity and secret gadgets. Old Gaga retained a fascinat6ion with all gadgets for the rest of his life, and any Xmas or Birthday presents usually involved some sort of novelty gadget style fun toy that would keep him amused for a bit.

Fast forward to the actual book review now. I have read this and appreciate that MI9 did exist ad that everything he said was basically completely true and indeed the book documents the full lists of gadgets handed out to RAF pilots and others who faced the potential of capture on foreign shores. Indeed James Bond, creator Sir Ian Fleming was connected to MI9 along other (less fêted) famous espionage figures such as Kim Philby. MI9 were the par excellence intelligence service of World War 2 for Britain – It encompassed Room 900 and also IS9. Their mission was focussed on ‘Escape and Evasion’. Whereas services such as SOE, MI6 and GCHQ (Bletchley Park – Alan Turing, Enigma Code, computers etc) did exist and indeed were often established due to WW2, MI9 was so clandestine that very little information has ever been released and much is still locked away in the archives. This book therefore was well-researched. It does tell the most remarkable tales, one of the most exciting collection of narratives I have encountered in studying WW2 history.

MI9 did indeed liaise and work with the collaboration of the other intelligence agencies, although frictions andEscape andEvasion, rivalries did exist. We look at its formation at the start of the book.

It was created specifically to deal with the issue of servicemen who were ‘behind enemy lines’. In addition to ‘Escape and Evasion ‘ which was the main goal, it also was a direct intelligence-gathering operation with any repatriated personnel being debriefed for vital intelligence about enemy movements and other critical information related to the enemy and the situation of other allies in hostile territory. They set up training programmes for all personnel such as RAF pilots, and D-Day Landing soldiers, who were at risk of enemy capture.

The book contains lots of detail of the escape routes set up, often run by families of resistance Europeans, many young women, who were dissatisfied with Nazi occupation and felt compelled to actively engage the enemy by assisting allied servicemen in any way possible, often very much putting their own lives and the lives of their families and loved ones directly on the line. Indeed if an allied soldier was caught by the Nazis he would often be interred in a POW camp but as unpleasant as the experience was, he would survive. The brave European citizens risking all for the ‘rat-lines’ would have no such luxury. If they were betrayed or captured by the Nazis they were simply shot – Indeed for every successful repatriation, there was an estimated one dead European civilian in the analysis of post war statistics. These people often did it all at their own expense and it is to the credit of I9 that as the war ended and in the aftermath one of the main mission focuses was to provide good financial renumeration for these European heroes and heroines..  The Comet Line was probably the most famous of the escape routes and an obvious lead character was the remarkable young Dédée. Rat Lines were operational in Paris, in Belgium, in Holland, in Italy and indeed in Germany itself and also in South East Asia, in the jungles where the attitude to prisoners by Japanese soldiers was entirely different and Pyrenees and Alpine mountain passes were replaced by tropical rainforest jungle. We hear of the Naga Queen in the Naga Hills of Burma.

Famous stories such as ‘Escape from Colditz’ were based on reality as indeed was ‘Escape to Victory’. I was amazed at the ingenuity of prisoner escapes and just how well organized and versatile and creative the allied POWs were. They used to get smuggled board games from home sent in, secretly containing all the necessary gadgets and escape materials.

MI9 was disbanded after World War 2 and to my knowledge doesn’t exist today. It makes James Bond even look dull. It is such an exciting really war time adventure story and the truth is we are probably only just scraping the surface of the reality of what actually happened in MI9. It’s like ‘Allo Allo’ just without the faux-pas comedy and some real bravery and action. In an age of #brexit it is worth noting just how much the Europeans put on the line for our troops and the real heros of the story are not the POWs or the MI9 officers, but the simple young women and families who went that extra mile to defeat Nazism and win World War 2 for the allied cause.

#centuryofgaga My grandad was Flight Lieutenant William Gordon Gerrard (26.05.1923-14.02.2015). sadly he didn’t make it to celebrate his 100^th Birthday (today: 26.05.2023) but I’m most certainly raising a glass to him up in the surly bonds, and this book review is part of the tribute I pay to him to continue his legacy and that of his fellow patriotic countrymen who served us so well during World War 2 and who must be pretty thin on the ground nowadays as we lose aa wise generation who understood what a a genuine global conflagration consisted of.  In this tense hostile global atmosphere where it’s pretty much boiling over militarily into World War 3, it makes the study of the history of the previous world wars that much a critical pursuit or paramount importance and therefore I’d encourage you to go out and read Helen Fry’s book on MI9, perhaps.

Review: Zlata’s Diary – A Child’s Life in Sarajevo – by Zlata Filipović

What’s a grown 45 year old male doing reading a little Bosnian girl’s diary you might ask yourself. Well, it cropped up as a recommendation in a documentary on the war in the former Yugoslavia, a subject to which I have passionately researched from its genesis. The Balkans conflict is (to date) the worst conflict that has taken place on European soil since World War 2 (although Ukraine must now be heading to take over that mantle, perhaps? Let’s hope not!). There was some pretty brutal stuff going on and a complete breakdown of society, the break up of a nation and all the murky, dirty traits of war nationalism, ethnic division, race and religion, all went up in smoke and Sarajevo was the epicentre of the whole mess, where little Zlata was a carefree little schoolgirl, and had her life turned upside down, directly experiencing the day to day hell of living through war. When you think of war, you think of soldiers, tanks, battlefields, munitions, generals and lots of death and injuries. The history books are full of tactical analysis of military commanders’ strategies and details of who won and who lost and what the politicians were doing. Often it is the collateral damage that is the worst in the war. The inhabitants of London’s East End felt the blitz more than the pilots of the Battle of Britain. Zlata is a normal girl, with a normal family, just getting on with a normal life. She is a civilian. When the bombs start raining down, Zlata is right there on the scene. Her neighbours are affected. It is her streets that are the battleground. Her school is closed and her friends are either killed or flee the terrible tragedy that is unfolding on her doorstep in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This is where a lot of the worst of the ethnic divisions are apparent with Bosnian-Serbs fighting Bosnian-Croats, Muslims and a previous harmony among the population is cast out for some terrible tragic results, well-documented later in war-crimes cases such as the Srebenica massacre. Zlata is the Anne Frank of the Balkans War. She notes in ‘Mimmy’ a primary account that no historian should ignore. Ye, it’s sad, yes, it’s heart-breaking and war is something that nobody should have to live through. But when war does happen, the importance of documentation is critical and Zlata leaves her testament as a warning for future warmongers and future victims of war and survivors. It wouldn’t hurt some of the politicians and war industry profiteers involved in the current Ukraine crisis to pick up a copy of Zlata’s diary. It’s a kid’s book, written by a kid. It’s not long, won’t take up too much of your time. But by heck it could transform your thinking and opinion to the betterment of all of society. Daily struggles for water supply and gas and electric are sounding to me in 2023 as quite realistic possibilities for my own future in the U.K. (I’m told as a result of war) – Coping mechanisms are great. Zlata does get upset, but rarely depressed. She has a transcendental philosophy and sees in the most simplest of basic provisions or freedoms a ray of sunshine in the midst of the dirty tragedy that is unfolding all around her. Ultimately, her writing work is not in vain. French journalists pick up on the diary and TV crews start popping in to see her and ultimately after securing a publishing deal for the diary, Zlata and her family are flown out and repatriated in Paris, thus escaping them from further direct immediate harm from the war. Not every young diary writer was perhaps so lucky as Zlata, bhut it’s amazing that she did manage to get the book out there and it is a bestseller. I just wonder how many little girls are hiding in the blackened ruins of apartment blocks in Mariupol, their only lifeline and hope being pencilled into their own diaries.
Adrian Mole talked about pimples. Zlata has a more grown up conversation but she also likes cats and playing the piano. I remember first seeing the live story about Zlata on Blue Peter. It’s taken me a while to get around to reading Zlata’s Diary but I am glad that I have now done that.

Review: War and Peace – by Leo Tolstoy

‘War and Peace’ needs no introduction. It holds its place in the minds of contemporary society as a literary classic. One cannot pick up a newspaper article on great books without a passing mention of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Like other classical works such as the Bible, I think that their obvious fame means and their influence on society and heir survival into modern times means that at the very least if you happen to pick up and read one of these rare works you will rarely face disappointment. Indeed, without further ado, I confess that ‘War and Peace’ is one of the very best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Critics compare it to Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey. I’d say it outflanks them. Firstly, it is a marathon read. If you’re looking on Amazon for value for money on pence per word you can’t go far wrong with Tolstoy. For about £9 you get 1400 pages. But don’t get fooled into thinking the epic will keep you going for months on end as the pages turn fast. The story is quite entrancing and addictive. I suppose one of the beauties of writing such a huge tome for an author, is that it gives you a big canvas on which to develop your story fully and also to really define your novel’s characters. ‘War and Peace, covers a timespan of about 20 years at the start of the nineteenth century, a time when enlightenment thinking and imperial nationalism had produced great changes across all of European society, including Russia. The French Revolution spread like a virus with its new emancipation ideas and politics was actively changing the shape of entire societies. Of course the guillotines of post 1789 France soon gave way to the ‘little Corsican’ to emerge and of course our hero / antihero ‘old Boney” Napoleon Bonaparte himself does play a leading role in the book. The main war is Napoleon’s initial successful attack on mother Russia followed by his ultimate failure to seize power and the retreat of his army and destruction of the Grande Armée as it backed out of a burning Moscow and headed back down through the harsh winter roads leading back to Europe where virtually his entire corps perished, famously eating their horses to dodge starvation. Of course, closer to our own times a future diminutive European dictator, Adolf Hitler, failed to learn from the mistake of Napoleon and didn’t even make it to Moscow getting his whole World War 2 campaign totally written off by the Red Army following the counterpoint of the battle of Stalingrad which swung Nazi victory away from the latest grandiose empire-builder, daring to challenge the might of the Rus Steppes. Napoleon’s enemy is Tsar Alexander I and it is warming to see the love of the Tsar demonstrated by his people, the army and the characters at peace. These were pre-Leninist times for an aristocratic Russia, still with serfs, a society directed towards the salons of Paris for its artistic and cultural influence, yet close enough to the European mainstream to be sucking in some of the candidness of enlightenment authors such as Voltaire or Rousseau with their revolutionary ideologies that would reshape modern man’s destiny. We are in an age of excitement, an age of hope, a changing world, a globalised society. Tolstoy, a novelist with direct experience of conflict, being a veteran of the Crimean War, was very eccentric in his real life, seeing much of the excesses of society, living both as a hedonist and a monk. He was a gambling philanderer, but also a loyal Russian subject with obvious amazing talent for observation and writing. Undoubtedly ‘War and Peace’ is a masterpiece and is cited as the pinnacle of Russian literary culture. Its beauty, perhaps, is in its uniqueness. The critics had no idea how to categorise it. It is such an original, creative masterpiece. Is it history, is it fiction, is it romance, is it war? Is it philosophy? The answer is that it is all. A variety of all ingredients chucked deep in with the rest of the Borsch in the pot and delivered in a unravelling exciting journey alternating between the peaceful salons of St Petersburg and the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. In researching the novel, Tolstoy actually visited several battle sites just to be fully consistent in his given detail – indeed the accuracy of the book’s battle scenes has been highly lauded by military historians.
The characters (and there are over 500 throughout the book) are centred around three main aristocratic families: Thee Bezukhovs, The Bolkonskys and the Rostovs. Count Pierre Bezukhov, a wild young man, accidentally inherits a fortune and his quest for morality and happiness is an inward journey in many ways despite the outward appearance of such material wealth. Prince Andrei Nikolayovich Bolkonsky is the real military hero of the novel and fares the best out of the central characters in the fight against Napoleon. He also manages to land the love of the most delicate and fragrant female character the dainty, youthful Natalya Rostov, although her romantic life is quite meandering throughout her courting adventures. Andrei has a sister Maria and her fraught relationship with her father’s growingly irrational discipline is an interesting familial relationship. Nikolai Rostov is a hussar in the war and although perhaps not reaching the ranking heights of Prince Andrei with his more diplomatic movements in high military circles, he is yet a formidable warrior in touch with the rank and file soldiers of the Tsar.It is Nikolai Rostov’s officer friend and comrade, Denisov who steals the show for me and is my favourite character in the novel. His speech impediment, so faithfully portrayed by the English translators gives his often haphazard movements throughput the novel a genuine comedy value and to me he is the warmest and most interesting of the stars of the show. The journey moves through family life and the early scenes include salons and ballrooms where conversation and polite society in the drawing rooms of Moscow and St Petersburg reflect upon all of society’s concerns. There isa genuine nostalgia for times gone by and to see Russian high society in full flow is a forgotten world now. Oligarchs way have been the bastard children of the collapse of the Soviet Union but they are no replacement for the aristocracy who with all wealth and down to every element of the bourgeoisie, from Count to Kulak, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin et al, destroyed these societal elements completely with the Bolshevik communist revolution. The later years of Soviet Russia I think make Tolstoy even more important as an historical work in that he genuinely, even if working primarily with historical characters, captures the mood and feelings of a society in mutatis.
There is genuine love and romance and the female characters hold their own. I’m not so soppy myself and prefer the war stuff like any good redblooded bloke but it’s hard not to notice the sweet feminine grace and womanly charm of some wonderful women who do seduce and distract the gaze of our male protagonists.
Tolstoy has it all and ‘War and Peace’ is a wonderful experience from which everyone should benefit at some stage in their life. Dostoyevsky used to be my favourite Russian author but I think Tolstoy now trumps him and I’m in a mad panic to see just how many words per pence Anna Karenina contains so I can drain my piggy bank from some of my shiny rubles.

Review: Behind The Enigma – The Authorised History of GCHQ – Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency – by John Ferris

This is a weighty tome (800 plus pages) and the authoritative history of perhaps the least glamorous of the U.K.’s principal security services. However, the facts illustrated in this book clearly demonstrates the critical role GCHQ plays in national security and perhaps one could argue is more relevant and more important than its more glamorous siblings, MI5 and MI6. From its incept in the early twentieth century we see the heights reached by Bletchley Park, the immediate forerunner to the (renaming) creation of GCHQ. The success of cracking the Nazi Germany Enigma code by computer-creating cryptographer heroes such as the now famous Alan Turing, is perhaps the height of the glamour. Post WW2 Bletchley Park staff were transferred over to a permanent base in rural Gloucestershire. Cheltenham later housed the service in the legendary doughnut, a purpose built facility that can rival James Bond’s flash new Thames-side MI6 HQ. The main division of labour at GCHQ falls into two branches – SIGINT and COMINT. Mathematicians are well sought for their crypto-analytic skills and GCHQ also encourages linguistically skilled talent. Most workers tend to stay in the organisation until retirement although the pay rates can be rather low and promotion opportunities thin on the ground. However, job satisfaction exists with interesting, varied, intellectually stimulating and critically important jobs. As well as skilled university recruits, a lot of workers are recruited in the administrative divisions and women have always been treated on a more or less level par with their male colleagues.

The initial post-WW2 focus on the agency was for targeting Russia, with linguists retraining and as much as 90% of the interceptions being directed to behind the Iron Curtain. GCHQ had success against the Soviet Union to a degree much more than HUMINT counterparts. MI5 and MI6 were often left lagging in comparison with KGB master spies. GCHQ has developed and is almost totally integrated with the American equivalent of signals intelligence, the NSA (National Security Agency) in the United States of America. Intelligence sharing in the secret UKUSA handshake agreement allowed all but the most politically sensitive data between the two nations to be completely shared. Five Eyes (including Commonwealth partners, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) is also important as is co-working with NATO allies but the USA with its larger budget and technological dominance has really been an asset to GCHQ development and from their point of view the NSA appreciates the skilled dedication of more traditional and experienced British siginters. As the twentieth century progressed, the digital age continued to rapidly develop on a global scale. GCHQ has to constantly adapt and master new communications technologies and acquire the latest state of the art equipment, necessary to maintain Britain’s post-imperial role as a primary global power. Enemies also change and Germans have given way to Soviets, the collapse of the USSR after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading towards an internet dominated age where Islamic Salafi Jihadists strike terror in Western democracies and rising China sends an unleashed horde of cyberattackers, their quest to steal Western technology and disrupt libertarian values in their global competitors.

The internet is a revolution and there is a demand for the public to be protected. In recent years GCHQ has emerged from the shadows and reluctantly revealed some of its clandestine secrets and the Directors of the present day have a need to be media savvy as well as being able to cloak and dagger brief the politicians and its foreign office and military masters. I found the details of the trade union problems in the 1970s to be surprising and interesting and can understand why unionisation was banned at GCHQ as a result of protecting national security. The most memorable chapter of the book was the case studies on Palestine (Israel), Konfrontasi (Indonesia) and Falklands conflict (Argentina). Being a linguist experienced in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic and Russian, someone who is techwise and also keen on protecting the nation and Commonwealth and allies of the U.K., and with the doughnut being half hour train ride away, I have written to them on multiple occasions, seeking some form of mutually beneficial employment but alas, the door is firmly closed and I have not heard but a peep emanating from the elusive GCHQ. Interesting book though, and well-researched and written in detail. Recommend.

Review: MI6 – Fifty Years of Special Operations – by Stephen Dorril

This detailed 800 page book covers fifty years of MI6, the UK’s foreign espionage service. From relatively humble beginnings during the second world war, MI6 grew to become a leading foe of Soviet Russia and its notorious KGB. The book documents in detail issues that affected the service from the beginning and I especially was enamoured by the division of early chapters covering each of the spheres of influence where MI6 were working in the aftermath of World War 2. The book amalgamates knowledge I have of this service from other reading and often due to its sheer volume, will analyse in depth details that were previously unknown. It often is critical of the service’s failures and sometimes questionable morality in its operations. The obvious exposure of the country by moles within MI6 such as Kim Philby were very damaging to our nation. It is clear that there was much frustration during the Cold War with a failure to penetrate the Soviet system properly. Also, as the years have moved on, the critical importance of US intelligence – the CIA and NSA – to UK intelligence services – becomes paramount. Our declining empire has meant that MI6 has had to do all it can to keep our position as a global power propped up in the world. There is a very good section on the often blunderous years of operations in the Middle East, culminating in the Suez crisis which was a clear debacle. Moving into the modern era (Book concludes just before second Gulf War) the author successfully identifies future directions for the service and there is interesting coverage of MI6 whistleblower Richard Tomlinson, who has revealed his life as an operative in a controversial book. I enjoyed this large book and feel that it will be useful for reference in any further research I may do on intelligence services.

 

Review: The Last Gangster – My Final Confession – by Charlie Richardson

Charlie Richardson was an important figure in the London Underworld during the 1960s. The Krays often overshadow The Richardsons in terms of their notoriety as London gangsters but, as is clear from the revelations in this book, The Richardson family were certainly equally as important in the capital’s underworld. Whereas the Kray twins had fame and used to use a lot of violence, the Richardsons tended to be more business-orientated. The two families met each other and were interlinked, sometimes having nasty fallouts during their periods as rivals. Charlie Richardson begins his book back in his youth, remembering the harsh days of World War 2 and what growing up during the blitz and subsequent years of suffering under rationing etc meant to his character formation. He had an early acumen for business and started off as a scrap metal dealer, something that he built his whole operations around. His reputation as a South London hard man led him to brush shoulders with the rich and famous and very powerful. What struck me was not so much the run of the mill criminal tales but the way he was used by high society politicians and espionage networks. Ultimately, his trumped up 25 year jail sentence in 1966 due to allegedly torturing some of his debtors using an electroshocking ‘black box’ – a crime he still refutes – was probably so severe due to his involvement in a South African spy plot to bug Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Downing Street telephones. The chapter when he dodged out of his military draft ending up in his first big prison spell was interesting. Charlie Richardson was certainly a ladies man and could charm the women, moving through several before finally settling with his final partner, Reggie, on his release from jail. The businessman shows in his overseas mining ventures and it was clear that he can not be regarded as just a tough typical cockney criminal. He was a thinking man and his university studies whilst serving his jail sentence showed how he was certainly of a high intellectual ability. What strikes the reader about Charlie Richardson, in his honest and straightforward autobiographical account, is that, aside from his illicit activities and tough reputation, he was above all a family man with values. It is certain, in particular from the character testimonies bequeathed after his death, that Richardson was held in very high esteem with the respect of ordinary decent folk as well as having clearly earned his stripes as perhaps the ‘Last Gangster’ of a forgotten age. Still to this day Richardson’s name in London is held in awe and through reading this book, it is clear to me, why this should be.

 

Review: Women and the Second World War in France, 1939-1948: Choices and Constraints – by Hanna Diamond

This book focuses on the role of French women during World War 2 and the immediate aftermath. It is clear that the women of France bore the brunt of dealing with the occupier, very often their men away, detained as prisoners of war or, for example, sequestered to work abroad in the Fatherland, Germany. Women had to cope with running family businesses, looking after the family, acquiring food. They may have chosen to either be collaborationists or to have joined the resistance. I found it particularly interesting hearing of the women who collaborated with the enemy, either seeking roles within Vichy or directly engaging with the German soldiers. The shorn heads of collaborators at Liberation cast powerful images in the reader. Women became, I feel, more valued in society as a result of their wartime activities and although they may have gone back to their roles afterwards as second class citizens within the family and society, they did earn themselves suffrage and I feel moved women as a whole towards parity with their male counterparts. The book is written in feminists tones, though without being to alienist to the male reader. It is factual and interesting and provides a good basis for further study for the university course I anticipate studying on the subject of Women in World War 2 France.

Review: Catch-22

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 20th century classic novel I had to read. It is a fascinating story of the Second World War which grows ever more absurd as Yossarian proceeds on his quest to return home. The characters are fantastic, especially Milo, the entrepreneurial head of the syndicate. The horrors of war can be seen from the ever-increasing list of casualties which disturbs Yossarian as, enveloped in catch-22, the missions he is required to fly, before his tour of duty ends, keep increasing. At times, there is joy, when the men are recuperating from their flights, enjoying themselves in Rome or relaxing at the mess hall. There is always wit and humour although most of the stories have very dark conclusions. The novel jumps from character to character and from scenario to scenario but it is all wonderfully woven together and it builds to a final crescendo where the helplessness of Yossarian’s situation has built to a farcical outcome and he bids his attempt to escape the inescapable catch-22 which constantly revolves around every situation invoked in the tale. It’s a great read and I’m sure must have really appealed to those who were present in the battles of the war itself. A very good book.

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