The real story of how Winston Churchill and the British mastered deception to defeat the Nazis - by conning the Kaiser, hoaxing Hitler and using brains to outwit brawn. By June 1940, most of Europe had fallen to the Nazis and Britain stood alone. So, with Winston Churchill in charge the British bluffed their way out of trouble, drawing on the trickery which had helped them win the First World War. They broadcast outrageous British propaganda on pretend German radio stations, broke German secret codes and eavesdropped on their messages. Every German spy in Britain was captured and many were used to send back false information to their controllers. Forged documents misled their intelligence. Bogus wireless traffic from entire phantom armies, dummy airfields with model planes, disguised ships and inflatable rubber tanks created a vital illusion of strength. Culminating in the spectacular misdirection that was so essential to the success of D-Day in 1944, Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945 is a thrilling work of popular military history filled with almost unbelievable stories of bravery, creativity and deception. Nicholas Rankin is the author of Dead Man's Chest, Telegram From Guernica and Ian Fleming's Commandos. 'This is a story clamouring to be told. We could not have imagined the scope of the inventiveness, the daring of these people's imaginations . . . I could not stop reading this book.' Doris Lessing

In February 1942, intelligence officer Victor Jones erected 150 tents behind British lines in North Africa. "Hiding tanks in Bedouin tents was an old British trick," writes Nicholas Rankin. German general Erwin Rommel not only knew of the ploy, but had copied it himself. Jones knew that Rommel knew. In fact, he counted on it--for these tents were empty. With the deception that he was carrying out a deception, Jones made a weak point look like a trap. In A Genius for Deception, Nicholas Rankin offers a lively and comprehensive history of how Britain bluffed, tricked, and spied its way to victory in two world wars. As Rankin shows, a coherent program of strategic deception emerged in World War I, resting on the pillars of camouflage, propaganda, secret intelligence, and special forces. All forms of deception found an avid sponsor in Winston Churchill, who carried his enthusiasm for deceiving the enemy into World War II. Rankin vividly recounts such little-known episodes as the invention of camouflage by two French artist-soldiers, the creation of dummy airfields for the Germans to bomb during the Blitz, and the fabrication of an army that would supposedly invade Greece. Strategic deception would be key to a number of WWII battles, culminating in the massive misdirection that proved critical to the success of the D-Day invasion in 1944. Deeply researched and written with an eye for telling detail, A Genius for Deception shows how the British used craft and cunning to help win the most devastating wars in human history.

Rankin tells the story of a secret intelligence outfit conceived and organized by Ian Fleming during World War II, named "30 Assault Unit", a group who was expected to seize enemy codebooks, cipher machines, and documents in high-stakes operations, and which inspired his creation of the James Bond character.

The story of Churchill's personal weapons development department, staffed by ingenious boffins, who developed numerous innovative weapons that helped win the war.

The man, and the only man we have for this hour.' Indefatigable patriot, seasoned soldier, incomparable orator and leader of men - Winston Churchill's greatness in leading Britain's coalition government to triumphant victory in the Second World War is undisputed. Yet Churchill's enduring legacy to the world is attributable at least in equal part to his unshakeable belief in the science of war. From the development of radar and the breakthroughs at Bletchley Park to the study of the D-Day beaches and the use of bouncing bombs, this brilliant and gripping narrative reveals the Second World War as an explosive phase of scientific history, an unprecedented crucible for change that involved a knife-edge race to the finish.

Adolf Hitler's failure to take Gibraltar in 1940 lost him the Second World War. But in truth the formidable Rock, jutting between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, was extraordinarily vulnerable. Every day, ten thousand people crossed its frontier to work, spy, sabotage or escape. It was threatened by Spain, Vichy France, Italy and Germany. After the USA entered the war, Gibraltar became General Eisenhower's strategic headquarters for the invasion of North Africa and the battle for the Mediterranean.

P.G. Maxwell-Stuart's history of the wizard from ancient times to the present shows just how extraordinary a character the wizard has proved to be - not merely a conjuring trickster or malicious egotist in league with Satan, but also a deeply religious person intent on using magic the better to understand the mind of God.

Reginald Jones was nothing less than a genius. And his appointment to the Intelligence Section of Britain's Air Ministry in 1939 led to some of the most astonishing scientific and technological breakthroughs of the Second World War. In Most Secret War he details how Britain stealthily stole the war from under the Germans' noses by outsmarting their intelligence at every turn. He tells of the 'battle of the beams'; detecting and defeating flying bombs; using chaff to confuse radar; and many other ingenious ideas and devices. Jones was the man with the plan to save Britain and his story makes for riveting reading.

A penetrating account of the dynamics of World War II’s Grand Alliance through the messages exchanged by the "Big Three" Stalin exchanged more than six hundred messages with Allied leaders Churchill and Roosevelt during the Second World War. In this riveting volume—the fruit of a unique British-Russian scholarly collaboration—the messages are published and also analyzed within their historical context. Ranging from intimate personal greetings to weighty salvos about diplomacy and strategy, this book offers fascinating new revelations of the political machinations and human stories behind the Allied triumvirate. Edited and narrated by two of the world’s leading scholars on World War II diplomacy and based on a decade of research in British, American, and newly available Russian archives, this crucial addition to wartime scholarship illuminates an alliance that really worked while exposing its fractious limits and the issues and egos that set the stage for the Cold War that followed.

In this fascinating and unique biography, Dr Piers Brendon looks deeper into Churchill's love of the animal kingdom, and at how animals played such a large part in his everyday life.