72 Quotes by Ben MacIntyre

Secrets are the currency of intelligence work, and among professional spies a little calculated indiscretion raises the exchange rate.

This was an odd conclusion: seawater has many effects on the human body, but male-pattern baldness is not one of them.

It is perfectly possible for two people to listen to the same words and hear entirely different things.

What is the use of living if you cannot eat cheese and pickles?′ she asked. As cofounder of the Cheese Eaters League, Ivor thought she had a point.

As the real army plowed through the waves toward Normandy, two more fake convoys were scientifically simulated heading for the Seine and Boulogne by dropping from planes a blizzard of tinfoil, code-named “Window,” which would show up on German radar as two huge flotillas approaching the French coast.

Fleming is charming65 to be with, but would sell his own grandmother. I like him a lot.

Before becoming headmaster of Eton, Claude Elliott had taught history at Cambridge University, despite an ingrained distrust of academics and an aversion to intellectual conversation. But the long university vacations gave him plenty of time for mountain climbing.

Of all the strands in Operation Fortitude, none was quite so bizarre, so wholly unlikely, as the great pigeon double cross, the first and only avian deception scheme ever attempted.

Here was heroism, but here, too, was mounted suicide in full-dress costume.