Quotes from Ben Macintyre

As his own end approached, Elliott reflected on a life that had been "undistinguished, albeit mildly notorious," and tremendous fun. He had known indignity, misfortune, and intimate betrayal, but his fund of natural optimism never ran out. "I feel I have been extraordinarily lucky," he wrote. "I look back on my career with some wonderment

As so often in the history of communism, the bloodshed came not from external forces but through vicious infighting.

Rudi listed his objections to communism: "The exaggerations in the press, the primitive tone of some articles, the boring speeches filled with jargon, the arrogant dismissal of opposing views, the ham-fisted behaviour towards intellectuals, whom you isolate instead of winning over, insulting opponents instead of disarming them with logic and recruiting them.

The evidence on enemy intelligence officers and agents grew to more than twenty volumes, a veritable who's who of German spying. The Garbo case alone would swell to twenty-one files, more than a million pieces of paper.

St John Philby was a notable scholar, linguist, and ornithologist, and he did achieve fame of a sort, but he might have found more lasting appreciation had he not been so profoundly irritating, willful, and arrogant. He was a man who regarded his opinions, however briefly adopted, as revealed truth: he never backed down, or listened, or compromised. He was equally swift to give and take offense and ferociously critical of everyone except himself.

The most remarkable new arrival was Eddie Chapman, the British safecracker parachuted into East Anglia in December 1942, who would become "Agent Zigzag." Each fresh arrival, each intercepted spy, each potential new double agent, added to the strength of the system and the mountain of paper.

reality he worked for MI6, recruiting agents and potential double agents and, with his wife, Peggie, also an MI6 officer, organizing a rich range of skulduggery to confound German espionage in the Iberian peninsula.

As a mark of opposition, many wore paper clips in their lapels. The paper clip was a Norwegian invention; the little twist of metal became a symbol of unity, a society binding together against oppression.

One of the oldest gambits in intelligence is "the dangle," when one side appears to make a play for someone on the other, lures him into complicity, and gains his trust, before exposing him.

Video killed the radio stars, and digital killed the old 'inkies'. (Ben Macintyre writing in The Times about the death of the New Musical Express (NME) in print.)

One colleague described him thus: "With fierce black eyes and a hawk-like nose, thick well-oiled hair slicked back from a low forehead, he looked like a casting director's ideal choice for a desert sheikh or a slinky tango lizard.

Whatever his reasons, and despite his reputation as an intelligence guru, by 1943 von Roenne was deliberately passing information he knew to be false, directly to Hitler's desk.

Lenin is often credited with coining the term "useful idiot," poleznyi durak in Russian, meaning one who can be used to spread propaganda without being aware of it or subscribing to the goals intended by the manipulator.

human behaviour, if scrutinized sufficiently intensely, can begin to seem suspicious:

parapets…I felt the battlements close in, enfolding

Mayne never told anyone else about his secret attempt to find the remains of his beloved friend, for that would have revealed the other, gentler side to Paddy Mayne, and a hidden broken heart.

MI5 had once worried Churchill might go "off the deep end" if he knew too much about espionage matters. It can only be imagined how far off the deep end he would have plunged had he learned not only that the Double Cross system was in danger of unraveling but that the invasion itself was in jeopardy.

Like long-distance running, successful espionage requires patience, stamina, and timing.

In addition twelve real, and seven imaginary persons have been foisted upon the enemy as Double Cross spies.

Instead of introducing keen new spies into Britain, the Germans would be helping to recruit, train, finance, and transport a stream of ready-made double agents, precooked and ready to serve.

Unfortunate," "rather worrying," "most critical": these were delicate British euphemisms for what one officer described as "near-panic.

The author of these reports was one Flight Lieutenant Richard Melville Walker, who headed one of the most secret and peculiar units of MI5: "The Pigeon Service Special Section, B3C," charged with disrupting the enemy's use of pigeons and deploying Allied pigeons for passing on secret intelligence.

In 1917, the British Army, under General Sir

The De Havilland Mosquito—or Anopheles de Havillandus, as military wags liked to call it—had proved a lethal nuisance to the Nazis ever since it went into production in 1940. Indeed, its effect on the German High Command was positively malarial. Designed