There were only three things which SOE's agents could anticipate with confidence. That their parachutes would open, that their L-tablets would kill them, and that their messages from London would be accurately encoded.

The bloody-minded resilience with which they responded to disasters, especially those of their own making, their determination to liberate their territories no matter what, had been my first glimpse of what would one day be known as the Spirit of Resistance.

There is a special loneliness in unshared music, even if it was 'The White Cliffs of Dover'.

The need to justify and its sister frailty, the need to boast, were lethal weaknesses in SOE.