Operation Mincemeat | How Lies Helped Win the War | 4

Historian of deception and espionage Dr Helen Fry has spent years uncovering the extraordinary world of Britain’s wartime spies, codebreakers and secret intelligence networks. She joins Alice and Matt to reveal what it really took to fool the Germans in World War II. Was Operation Mincemeat as unique as we think? Can anyone learn to be a world-class liar? And how far should you take a deception when lives are on the line? Do you have a suggestion for a scandal you would like us to cover? Or perhaps you have a question you would like to ask our hosts? Email us at [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Matt Forde?

  I'm Matt Ford.

• 0:04Alice Levine?

  And I'm Alice Levine.

• 0:06Matt Forde?

  And this is British Scandal, an Audible original.

• 0:20Matt Forde?

  So Alice, British scandal stories often involve lies of some sort, but a deception on this scale really is something else. What did you make of Operation Mince Meat?

• 0:28Alice Levine?

  Well, as you know, I am a massive fan of both lies and the musical Operation Mince Meat. So I was already predisposed to love this. There were fewer songs than I'd hoped for.

• 0:38Matt Forde?

  Actually, given the way that the singing has gone in previous series, I'm thinking of the Sex Pistols. I'm also thinking of Three Lions.

• 0:45Alice Levine?

  Okay, thank you.

• 0:46Matt Forde?

  I personally am glad that there have been no songs in this.

• 0:50Alice Levine?

  Completely agree. This was one of my favourite series, maybe ever. I think this story is just so brilliant. We use the word audacious a lot, but I'm going to use it again. The idea of the body in the first place, I mean, incredible. The level of detail that it turns out they had to do. But who would have guessed that you had to cast Pam in the office and create the fake girlfriend, love letters, ticket stubs, the crossing and the double crossing to get the Germans to pay attention? It was just so theatrical and exciting and you brought it alive, Matt.

• 1:23Matt Forde?

  Oh, well, thank you. I mean, spying often feels very dangerous, particularly when the stakes are as high as they were when you're fighting the Nazis. But it also just felt like they had a lot of fun with it. It felt like a really entertaining project to be involved in.

• 1:35Alice Levine?

  Yeah, right. And it made me think, was this a one off? Were all the spies in World War Two running around, coming up with crazy plans like this? Or was most of it paper pushing and desk work?

• 1:46Matt Forde?

  Well, today's guest can help answer that question because today we are speaking to a historian of deception.

• 1:52Alice Levine?

  A professor of fibs.

• 1:55Matt Forde?

  Dr Helen Fry has written more than 25 books on World War Two, including The Walls Have Ears and Women in Intelligence. She's spent years uncovering the extraordinary secrets of Britain's spies, code breakers and the hidden intelligence network that helped turn the tide on the war. If anyone can tell us what it really takes to fool your enemies, it's Helen.

• 2:14Alice Levine?

  But can you trust her?

• 2:15Matt Forde?

  We'll find out. She joins us after this.

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• 3:54Matt Forde?

  Dr Helen Fry, welcome to British Scandal.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Thank you. It's great to be with you.

• 3:59Matt Forde?

  Well, it's great to have you here because you've spent years researching spies, espionage and secret intelligence during World War Two. What attracted you to lies?

• 4:07Speaker 05

  In terms of the intelligence side, I fell into that accidentally when interviewing some veterans in and around London who'd never told their stories because they'd signed the Official Secrets Act. But they could now tell their stories with the files being released. And that's where I started. And once I started to look at the intelligence stories, the spies, it's endlessly fascinating and it's addictive, actually.

• 4:34Alice Levine?

  Do you remember what it was in those testimonies that you found so compelling?

• 4:38Speaker 05

  I remember, yeah, very clearly. One of the stories, it was from Fritz Lustig, a secret listener. And he said to me, Helen, you have told the stories, you are telling the stories of us, of the 10,000 Germans who fought for Britain in the Second World War. Of course, 90% of them were Jewish. They'd fled Nazi persecution. And I promised him I would look at the declassified files and tell their story. And it would emerge as a parallel story to Bletchley Park, to the code breaking. So Fritz was amongst 100 German Jewish refugees who sat in three secret sites outside London,

• 5:20Speaker 05

  bugging the conversations of German prisoners of war after they'd been captured. And then from 1942 onwards, when Hitler's top commanders, his generals and field marshals were captured, they were listening in to them as well. And I worked through effectively over 80,000 transcripts of bugged conversations to reconstruct this incredible intelligence picture that's now been officially recognised by historic England as being as important as the code breaking at Bletchley Park for the outcome of the war. The handful of secret listeners I interviewed in their lifetime, they didn't really appreciate the significance of what they'd done.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  So Fritz Lustig, for example, said to me, "I always wanted to fight on the front line, but I was never given a chance. I was stuck in the countryside with his headphones on. I felt guilty for 70 years for having had a safe war." And that's interesting because their perception was that although they were told by their commanding officer, Thomas Kendrick, that they were doing something that was as important as fighting on the front line or firing a gun in action. And Fritz said, "Well, that was all very well. We didn't know. And at the end of the war, no one said to us, this is how you helped to win the war. They just went into their civilian life or they did intelligence in post-war Germany.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  And it's only with the declassified files that they came to appreciate." So so many of those, nearly 100 of those secret listeners went to their graves, never knowing just what they delivered for our freedoms.

• 7:05Matt Forde?

  They're secret listeners then? They're bugging the rooms these people are held in. Are they somewhere in the same building? Or are they listening down the line, miles and miles away?

• 7:14Speaker 05

  There were three sites, Trent Park, stately home near Cockfosters. And in that case, they were in the basement of the house. So it's an upstairs-downstairs story. It's fabulous. You have, after 1942, the German generals living a life of relative luxury, which of course is always outrageous when people hear about this. But we want the intelligence from them. They've got microphones hidden everywhere. And they're there from when they're captured at various points, 1943, after D-Day, in June 44, until the end of the war. And we are picking up all this. So that was a very different scenario to the other two sites, Latimer House and Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  And these were reserved for lower rank prisoners who were there for just a few days. The intelligence services constructed a sort of single storey army building at both sites, behind the mansion houses. And that's where the M room was, M for mic'd, where the secret listeners were. So they were actually behind the cells, behind the interrogation rooms. The prisoners were given a sort of loose, phony interrogation. And they thought we were stupid, the British, "Oh, they're incompetent. They don't know what they're doing." But it was all designed to make them relax. And of course, when they go back to their cell, in the case of Latimer House and Wilton Park, they give up to their mate. They're chatting about, "Well, I didn't tell the interrogator this." "Well, did he ask you that?" "No, no."

• 8:42Speaker 05

  And of course, one of the other things I discovered during the research was they actually used female interrogators for the first time ever in uniform at these sites. So what emerged was a really dynamic, fascinating story, not just of intelligence, the lives of the intelligence officers, the secret listeners, what the women did. It was naval, air and army intelligence. So this for me was really the starting point. And I thought, well, now I'm in the intelligence field. I'm not coming out anytime soon.

• 9:17Alice Levine?

  It's so fascinating. And I was going to ask you whether you find the cliche that all intelligence work is like 007 and actually there's a lot of kind of paper pushing and admin that goes into it. But it sounds like it's all fascinating and it's all very, very interesting.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  It is interesting. 70 years later, 80 years later, as a historian. But I know Fritz Lustig and a couple of the women I interviewed, who were intelligence officers, said there were periods when it was long and boring. I mean, the secret listeners would be listening from the moment the prisoners woke up, in shifts, 12-hour shifts, until they went to bed. Every day of the year, you don't have a day off on Christmas Day because as they discovered, in the case of the generals, they started to talk about some interesting military details on Christmas Eve. So this is a huge operation. And yes, there are moments that are boring, but also you have,

• 10:12Speaker 05

  we have a photograph of Ian Fleming, you wouldn't believe it, outside Latimer House. He actually recruited the small naval intelligence team that used the women as interrogators. So I thought, you can't make this up. You've got a 007 link. We've now got to find out which book they've appeared in, which Fleming book they've appeared in. And of course, against the backdrop of sometimes, yes, relatively boring work, they did have their cocktail parties at lunchtime. You know, we have photographs of them on the balcony at Latimer House with their pink gin. They loved their pink gin.

• 10:52Matt Forde?

  We talk about storytelling in the modern era as being very important to the success of political careers. Obviously, creating a believable story was crucial to Operation Mince Meat. How important is storytelling as a tool of war?

• 11:05Speaker 05

  It's absolutely vital. And if you look now at the various files that have been declassified, you see this incredible storytelling, this fictitious, parallel world, if you like. It's true of Operation Mince Meat, it's true of the bugging operation I talked about just now. You know, the intelligence services create this whole dramatic stage set, if you like. And that happened at Trent Park, for example, where the German generals just walk in to this stage set, not realising they're being pampered, they're having day trips, they're being given a fake aristocrat as their welfare officer, all of it created.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  And I just love that brilliance of our intelligence services. And as we've seen through, you know, the Operation Mince Meat, who would believe that one could possibly pull off these stories that are so fantastical and almost unbelievable?

• 12:06Alice Levine?

  Is Operation Mince Meat the most audacious example of that fantastical storytelling? Or, you know, are there some more of those in the Second World War that you can think of?

• 12:17Speaker 05

  It's certainly the first known, and as you say, audacious, operation, that huge deception. And reading the declassified files for Operation Mince Meat, you see that the commanders, Ewan Montague and Chalmley, they didn't know if they could pull it off. That's the thing, it is way out there. And of course, they did pull it off. And the consequences are enormous, because this was for the invasion of Sicily and Italy in the summer of 1943. But we had the bigger invasion on the minds of our commanders, and Winston Churchill and Roosevelt, for D-Day, June 44.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  So you have this discussion in the archives, in the intelligence files, well, we've pulled off Operation Mince Meat, but can we really do it again? And they did, they went on to do it again, with the double agents deceiving the enemy ahead of D-Day, where the landings are going to be, they're going to be in the Calais, for example, we've got a bigger army than we think of, we see inflatable tanks if the Germans are able to do some reconnaissance missions, he has a huge army on the south coast of England. But actually, it's inflatable tanks, they're not real. So we were brilliant, masterful at this deception.

• 13:41Speaker 05

  And amongst that, there were female double agents as well, that fed deception, it was part of a huge picture from all angles, as you say, back to that whole idea of storytelling. These are creations to deceive the enemy about what's really going on.

• 13:59Alice Levine?

  I mean, this is a fantastic advert for how creative you actually have to be if you work as an intelligence officer. These are all amazing creative minds.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  They are amazing creative minds. In fact, if you look at the skills that are required, it's diverse. So it's no good having one kind of mindset. Yes, you need the artistic, creative. So for example, interrogators, actors and journalists made really good interrogators, because they could create a story, a cover that they could hold. But equally, you needed people with analytical mindset to analyse the data that's coming in, analyse intelligence, work out how some of this could be fed back to the enemy, perhaps

• 14:47Speaker 05

  through deception, through false messages, through all kinds of other ways of smuggling, perhaps false documents in. So it's creating that, but you do need a diversity of brains. And that's what Operation Mince Meat had in the section that was run from the basement of the Admiralty.

• 15:08Alice Levine?

  Yes, because perhaps, I think of it as being incredibly lucky that Chalmley was on that team, but maybe, you know, way back when he was selected, that was in their minds, that he had this sort of interesting brain.

• 15:22Speaker 05

  Chalmley, of course, was already working for our security service MI5, so he was already immersed in that world. And Ewan Montague, again, he was seen as a very strong leader for Section 17M. They were brilliant, they were different characters. Chalmley was very relaxed, he was the one that sort of went out of the office, if you like, to instigate the operation. And they complemented each other. It's thinking outside the box, it's finding ways, a psychology, if you like, of understanding

• 15:58Speaker 05

  the mindset of your enemy, and working out, how can we hide the truth in plain sight? As Winston Churchill said, you know, his words along the lines of, in wartime, truth is so precious, she has to be guarded with a cloak of lies. And you have the brains together, but they couldn't do it, interestingly, without the women either, because we all know from the famous film, that they'd created this story, we're going to float this dead body, but it was Jean Leslie and her colleagues who said, well, actually, he's going to have a love life, he's going to have letters on him, let's plant a letter.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  And the men hadn't thought of that. So you do need a diversity of mindsets, people to look at it, take an overview, and say, what are the missing links that could mean that this story might fail? And you can't take that chance.

• 16:58Alice Levine?

  Do you think that anybody can be taught to deceive convincingly? Or do you think the very best intelligence officers are born with a certain kind of to-be-diplomatic personality?

• 17:09Speaker 05

  From what I've studied of deception and the intelligence files, it seems that, yes, you can teach someone a certain amount, but it's innate. Unless you're good at lying and holding a cover story, then that's risky. So I think there is something about a person's personality, primarily from a creative background. As I said, actors and journalists, writers as storytellers make really good instruments for these deceptions.

• 17:45Alice Levine?

  Because actually, you don't just want a liar, do you? Because often liars are a little bit unreliable, they don't keep track of their stories, as you've said, you want somebody who's methodical, and an actor is sort of building a database about a character, and they're keeping track of those threads, and they're sort of locking it all into place. So you don't just want the friend that tells tall tales, I guess.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  You absolutely don't. You need someone who can remember what they said last week or a couple of days ago. And that's particularly true of the interrogators, but it's true of the whole deception. And those double agents that went in to support all of these deceptions had to remember what they told their German handler, I mean, they were really working for us. You have to actually have a good memory, you have to be able to act well, and you have to remember your cover story. And that was true for some of those intelligence officers that became stool pigeons at some of the intelligence sites. They pretended to be German prisoners of war in uniform, but of course, they were really British.

• 18:51Speaker 05

  And again, it's the same techniques, it's part of the deception. You draw your fellow German prisoner into areas of discussion you know we need to know, but you have to know, in their case, the regiment they've come from, or if they're on a U-boat, they have to be on a different U-boat than the prisoner that they're with. They have to know intricate detail. And that's the other thing, they've got to have good memory for detail.

• 19:17Matt Forde?

  But also, not overplaying your hand, behaving as someone in that context would behave, and not getting too thirsty for too much information too quick.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Exactly, you have to be natural, relaxed. And there's a very funny story around that whole bugging operation, where the fake aristocrat, Lord Aberfeldy, he was really intelligence officer Ian Munro, and he loved his role so much, playing this fake aristocrat. By the way, he's named after a whisky distillery, which only the intelligence services could dream up. And he had a girlfriend on site, I haven't identified who she was, but she got fed up, and she went to the commanding officer and said to him, I'm fed up, she said, I want my boyfriend back, he's playing the lord out of hours. So there were some funny sides to this as well.

• 20:08Speaker 05

  But yes, they have to move in and out of character. You can't take any risks of having someone you think might not be able to hold that long enough.

• 20:20Alice Levine?

  As you were saying that, I was thinking, there's so much planning that must go into the technical side of what these undercover operatives need to know. So actually, small talk would be a really dangerous area, having to improvise on more casual conversation, talking about things that perhaps you haven't rehearsed could really catch you out, things that seem innocuous.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  That's the other thing you notice with the intelligence officers, they're very good at thinking outside the box, of adapting to creative situations. I had one case, for example, in the Second World War, a woman in her 70s, working, gathering intelligence for us from behind the lines, she's called Thorese de Radigais. And when she was captured by the Gestapo, she was then, at that point, 79 years old, she feigned senile dementia, and they let her go. These men and women were brilliant at, in that sticky situation, thinking outside the box. Who would imagine, if you face the Gestapo, you feign senile dementia if you're in your 70s? I don't think I would have thought of that, but it's utterly brilliant.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  And time and again, in these stories, in this deception history, we see this happening. And I think it's down to these very special, but very human, of course, people that happen to be in the right place and chosen at the right time.

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• 22:40Matt Forde?

  Operation Mincemeat required imagination, theatrics and meticulous planning. Was it exceptional? I mean, you gave us the example earlier of the inflatable tanks. But how did it compare with other deception operations taking place during the war?

• 22:53Speaker 05

  For me, this is, this is one of the highest deceptions. It's sheer brilliance. I mean, what more can we say? Who could possibly? Well, to start with, even imagine writing a script, you know, for a film, for a documentary, for a drama series. We're going to float this dead body off the coast of Spain. The fisherman will hopefully pick it up, give it to German intelligence. He's got fake invasion plans strapped to him. There is no ways that they're going to pull that off. It's a great film, great drama, but hang on a minute. We're actually going to do this for real.

• 23:34Speaker 05

  And it's risky because of course the Germans may have discovered it was fake. And they even do an autopsy. And of course, it's discovered that, yes, he did die by drowning. I mean, everything, every detail. And even when they released his body into the sea, that special capsule that they made so that it preserved his body so that it didn't look as though it had been in the sea longer than it would have been. The tiniest detail, detail is crucial. Of course, what we mustn't forget is in the spirit of Operation Mincemeat are those rogue heroes, the SAS in Egypt.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  I mean, again, utter brilliance that this whole phantom parachute regiment is created. And the Germans really feared it. They really believed that these parachutists could land behind their lines. But of course, in reality, that does become a reality. Amazing. I mean, if you can instill fear with these fake stories into the enemy, that's as important as if you actually carry out the mission. So it's preparation ground, yes, but those rogue heroes, again, they're, they're up there with our, our heroes.

• 24:57Speaker 05

  They're incredible. And they also pull off what is, seemed to be utterly incredible.

• 25:04Alice Levine?

  You've touched on the role of women in Operation Mincemeat. You mentioned Jean Leslie and Hester Leggett. What unique skills did women bring to the table in the Second World War? And why were they so useful for espionage?

• 25:20Speaker 05

  One of the things we've learned from the Second World War is that women played a critical and central role in intelligence interception. And we're very used to these photographs of women in uniforms sat at their desk with a pencil and paper, or if they're in a civilian role, as Jean Leslie was in naval intelligence. We just assume that they're secretaries. Are they doing admin? And there's nothing wrong with that. That needs to be done, of course. But when you dig deeper and you look at Operation Mincemeat, it's a really good example of where women start to smash the boundaries of what we understand women could and did do in intelligence roles.

• 26:05Speaker 05

  So they're absolutely at the heart, at an equal level in planning and executing this operation. And we find women, as I mentioned earlier, becoming interrogators. We find them analyzing intelligence. So yes, women who were non-commissioned, so that they weren't officers, were often doing translation work, decoding, all of that that we understand already. But they're actually doing roles as well that traditionally were assigned to men. And that's been hidden for so long by official secrecy. And now that this is emerging in our declassified files, I think it's exciting because it's recognizing at last their roles.

• 26:50Speaker 05

  And also hopefully inspiring women today to think, yeah, we were there. We did our bit, but we did more than our bit. We were absolutely crucial for the success of the outcome of the war alongside the men.

• 27:05Alice Levine?

  I think it's fair to say that being involved in Operation Mincemeat would have been an extraordinary wartime experience. So what happened to those intelligence officers after the war? Did they simply go back to ordinary life and they just possessed some unique skills?

• 27:22Speaker 05

  Ewan Montague, who headed the whole section, he went on after the war to become judge advocate and he was effectively working on the court martial for the Royal Navy. So he had a very interesting career beyond the war after his time in naval intelligence. Charlie, of course, returned to MI5 until about, well, early 1950s, around 1952. And then he moved to the Southwest where he's working in some business related to agriculture. So it must have been, as one veteran once said to me, almost for them, an anticlimax because you have this moment in the wartime. And it must have been true for the women as well.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  Jean Leslie, Hester Leggett. Jean Leslie went on to marry. We know very little about their personal lives afterwards. So it's very difficult to say what kind of life they had. I don't like to make huge assumptions, but many of the women did go back to civilian life frustrated, certainly not being able to tell their families what they'd done. And I had a case of one lady in particular where the male members of her family were quite condescending, you know, just in, in that kind of era after the war, when it was still a bit, you know, misogynist and that kind of thing. They had no idea what she delivered around D-Day. Unbelievable. So yes, it must have been particularly frustrating for them in an era where it was hard to carve out a career.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  But equally, I think it's important to say there were women who were kept on, particularly naval intelligence. So they didn't necessarily hang up their uniforms. They carried on, but they are still covered by official secrecy.

• 29:06Matt Forde?

  Let's think about the legacy of deception. How did Operation Mincemeat change the way intelligence agencies thought about deception overall?

• 29:15Speaker 05

  There is absolutely no doubt that Operation Mincemeat changed the way we perceive deception. It becomes an absolutely vital, integral part of any secret operations going forward. The key was that it was possible. And I know that sounds very, very simple, but at the beginning, as I've mentioned before, nobody knew if they could pull it off. What Operation Mincemeat gave them was the confidence to say, yes, we can do this. In each scenario, we have to be different, think outside the box, create new deception. And I think that's what it did.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  It rooted us in the ability and the belief that we could pull off these fantastical stories.

• 30:03Alice Levine?

  Could we pull off Operation Mincemeat today in a digital age?

• 30:09Speaker 05

  I don't have any contact with contemporary intelligence work, but I like to think, yes, surely we must be. I'm not a tech expert, but I'm hoping there are tech geniuses out there who can still deceive us in plain sight. And arguably, one might say perhaps it's easier in the age where you can create fake audio, videos, which of course people analyze and some people can tell actually, you know, subtle details, they are fake. I think it's potentially harder in a digital age. It's harder to hide in plain sight. So the challenges perhaps arguably could be greater, but I like to think we're still

• 30:53Speaker 05

  doing it.

• 30:55Alice Levine?

  I wonder as well if actually we'd be surprised at how many analog techniques are still being employed.

• 31:02Speaker 05

  Potentially, yes. There's always the thought that one should go back to traditional techniques. So yeah, maybe at some point, you know, the lights get turned off, we have to think of other ways of transmitting. As we saw with the Mossad operation with the pagers, you know, Hezbollah were using, they'd gone back to pagers and were not using traditional phone networks. So that of course relied, that knowledge relied on intelligence. But again, they managed to pull off that operation with the pagers and they used doorbells and goodness knows what else in terms of electronic gadgets. So again, when that story broke, I think some people thought it was fake. I remember people saying to me, no, that can't be possible.

• 31:46Speaker 05

  And then you realize they did it, they pulled it off. So again, it's an example of the fantastical fiction becoming reality, but actually hiding what's really going on.

• 31:59Matt Forde?

  But isn't that a long-term risk that actually the art of deception and then the stories that we enjoy are grist to the mill of the conspiracy theorists? They say, well, look, there are things like Operation Mincemeat. The British government does do things to deceive you.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  Well, I don't have a problem with that. And in many ways, obviously as a historian, we have to be very, very careful about our sources, not to slide into conspiracy theories ourself. But I just wonder, and I throw it out there, maybe conspiracy theories are also a helpful tool for hiding the truth. I don't know.

• 32:36Matt Forde?

  It's like the X-Files.

• 32:37Speaker 05

  It is. It's brilliant. And I suppose the other thing, of course, is you can deceive people, like with Operation Mincemeat, in plain sight. That story, pulled it off. There's a dead body. He's a real marine, except we know he wasn't. But also, where we're not quite sure, where something doesn't quite seem reality, you still don't quite know if it's reality or fiction. And this comes through a lot in our spy films. And you think, this feels quite close to the truth, doesn't it? Capture, the capture, absolutely brilliant. Are they doing that today? No idea, or is it fiction? And I think that also is captivating. And I think those that have created it behind the scenes, if

• 33:21Speaker 05

  it's really going on, must be chuckling, saying, yeah, we've pulled it off. The public have no idea if this is reality, but they're enjoying it. And I think there's something that appeals to us in this, this daring do. I think it's even better than 007. This is so much more creative than blowing up cars and having underwater boats with exploding pens and cocktails. It's great. But I think this is something else. This is in a different league.

• 33:51Alice Levine?

  Maybe MI5 are funding Hollywood film projects to throw us off the scent.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Well, now, that's a thought. I hadn't thought of that. Who knows?

• 34:02Alice Levine?

  Going to let you mull over that one. I mean, you touched on it just then, Helen, about just how compelling Operation Mincemeat is still, 80 years on. Why do you think we've had the musical, the film, why is it that people are still so gripped by it?

• 34:17Speaker 05

  I think they're gripped by it because of, it's the human element. It's, it's the, the wow element, the unbelievable, we absolutely pulled this off. It's, it's a fast-paced, fascinating story in itself. And then you realise it's based in reality. There's something about, it gives you a sort of adrenaline rush, doesn't it, in many ways? And I think it is different levels of dimension of what is a very human story, because you think about the huge deception operations of the wartime, enormous. You try and comprehend, which we do as historians, but for the general public, to distill it into one story and

• 35:02Speaker 05

  to touch on the human dimension. I think that's where we relate best. And of course, that links to the storytelling. And we just can't get enough of these brilliant stories.

• 35:12Alice Levine?

  And it follows those beats of a heist story, doesn't it? Except with the highest stakes you can imagine.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  Yes. And with that, you've got the, the sort of heist, but a lot of the mystery around the heist films and dramas, in the end, it's taken out. And I still think that even though we know the ending of Operation Mincemeat, we still find it exciting and inspiring. I'm not saying the heists aren't exciting, but for some reason, around the whole spies and espionage, there's still a mystery, even if we try and demystify some of it. And that's why, for me, I actually quite like the fact that we don't know everything. MI6, of course, never releases its files. But if they were to say to us, okay, historians,

• 36:00Speaker 05

  you can go in, help yourself, have whatever you want, you can know everything. Actually, I don't think I would want to do that. I love the fact that there's still an element of mystery, of surprise, and that there are things, quite rightly, that we don't have a right to know. And I think, I like the status quo.

• 36:20Alice Levine?

  And would you agree that sometimes the most powerful weapon in war is a convincing lie?

• 36:26Speaker 05

  Absolutely. In wartime, we need our deception. We need a convincing lie because there's so much at stake, our freedoms, our democracy, human rights. Yes, we have to engage whatever tools are necessary to protect those.

• 36:46Matt Forde?

  And finally, Helen, do you think you could do it yourself? Could you pull off a grand deception? Or would you rather just stick to research?

• 36:53Speaker 05

  Oh, very good question. Oh, I could probably be behind helping to write it and think creatively outside the box. Could I be a double agent that goes into the heart of, you know, the enemy's secret service? Probably not. Could I smuggle messages behind enemy lines with my bicycle? Probably. Could I be parachuted behind enemy lines like those SOE agents? No, I don't think I have the courage for that. But there are many talents that we all have. So who knows? Maybe one day I will create a deception plan, but I won't be able to talk about it.

• 37:27Matt Forde?

  Of course.

• 37:28Alice Levine?

  To be fair, Helen, it's exactly what a double agent would say, that I'm not really the person for the job. No, I could never do that. It just, it just all falls into place. It's just a bit too convenient.

• 37:38Speaker 05

  Well, there you are. I do promise you, I am just a historian, firmly rooted in history. I love the history, and I'll keep telling the stories.

• 37:48Matt Forde?

  Helen, this has been a privilege. Thank you so much.

• 37:51Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 37:57Matt Forde?

  Thank you so much to Dr Helen Fry. That was absolutely fascinating. Alice, what do you have for me next week?

• 38:02Alice Levine?

  Okay, I have another deception, but a much, much darker one. A cover-up by the British establishment that landed four innocent people in jail. We're going back to 1974, when a devastating bomb in Guildford led to one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history.

• 38:19Matt Forde?

  So this is obviously going to be the Guildford Four. We've already covered a miscarriage of justice and the troubles last year in a previous series, the Birmingham Six. So if that's anything to go by, this is going to be incredible.

• 38:31Alice Levine?

  Yes, I think British Scandal listeners are going to be shocked and gripped. This is a story of police corruption, crusading journalists, and the triumph of the human spirit.

• 38:41Matt Forde?

  Can't wait. You've been listening to British Scandal, an Audible original, produced by Audible with Samizdat, hosted by me, Matt Ford.

• 38:49Alice Levine?

  And me, Alice Levine.

• 38:51Matt Forde?

  The producer was Louise Mason. Recorded by Jai Williams. The executive producers for Samizdat were Joe Sykes and Dash Elisit Sina. Executive producers for Audible were Theodora Ludis and Estelle Doyle.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  Ghosts aren't real. At least, that's what journalist Tristan Redmond always believed. Sure, odd things happen in his childhood bedroom, but ultimately, he shrugged them off. Until he discovered that he wasn't alone, that everyone who lived thereafter him also had bizarre experiences they couldn't explain. And it gets even weirder. It just so happens that his wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door. Is this ghost somehow connected to her murder? He decides to go where no son-in-law should, digging up a cold case and asking questions that nobody wants answered. Like, could his wife's great-grandfather have gotten away with the perfect crime? This is a podcast about family secrets, overwhelming

• 39:54Speaker 04

  coincidence, and the things that come back to haunt us. For the best bingeable series like Ghost Story, listen to the Audible True Crime podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can get all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  There are books that change how you see the world, and there are books that change how you see yourself. In a new podcast series, A Great Book with Barack Obama, President Obama sits down with a series of surprising and sharp guests to explore six books that have shaped his life and perspective on the world. From Song of Solomon and The Fire Next Time, to All the Pretty Horses and Gilead, the president is joined by guests like Tom Hanks and Ta-Nehisi Coates to reflect on how these timeless stories shaped his thinking on everything from fatherhood to leadership, and discover together what they tell us about the world we live in and the world we want to create. Audible subscribers can listen

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