This book by Ben MacIntyre is a very interesting and most of all enjoyable read. It almost reads like a novel. Ben MacIntyre leaves no stone unturned. I particularly enjoyed his description of the German reception of the fake documents and the aftermath of it. Also, the final chapters describes the fate of all participants in this high suspense operation, which is very nice to know.

“The plan was born in the mind of a novelist and took shape through a most unlikely cast of characters: a brilliant barrister, a family of undertakers, a forensic pathologist, a gold prospector, an inventor, a submarine captain, a transvestite English spymaster, a rally driver, a pretty secretary, a credulous Nazi, and a grumpy admiral who loved fly-fishing.”An almost implausible sounding, exciting, very well-built up true story.Historian Ben Macintyre managed it all very nicely: it is a structu...

An almost picaresque story about Royal Marine Major William Martin, who was lost at sea in an aircraft accident carrying important dispatches about future Allied plans in the Mediterranean. His body washed ashore in Spain and by nefarious means the dispatches were copied and forwarded to Abwehr, German intelligence. Except that that major was no major and those dispatches were fake. It was all an elaborate plot cooked up by British Intelligence to deceive the enemy, and which disinformation Abwe...

Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre was truly excellent. A true story told with all the verve and pace of a top notch thriller. This was a truly British caper full of eccentric characters such as the cross dressing spy master,an RAF intelligence officer who hated locusts with a passion and a myopic former racing driver turned MI5 operative who drove straight over a roundabout because he couldn't see it. Also, we mustn't forget Derek Leverton,the undertaker who became an officer in the Royal Art...

A highly entertaining true story about a daring project of World War II. A very fun read and that it is real added greatly to it.

A marvellous story of intrigue of actual events during World War II. There are a host of wonderful and eclectic characters in England, Spain and Germany. The author presents all these in readable detail.The sequence of events – and there are several – are well depicted and we are clearly presented with the logical construction of this set-up meant to deceive the Germans into believing that the Allies mean to launch a multi-pronged invasion in the Mediterranean – instead of just Sicily. The autho...

The basic story is well known, but since the appearance of the first book, The Man Who Never Was, an extraordinary amount of new material has become available. Even if you've read The Man Who Never Was (I had), I can't recommend Operation Mincemeat highly enough. This is, quite simply, the most extraordinary book of its kind that I've ever come across. I couldn't put it down, and finished it in a little more than a day.The plot in a nutshell, in case you aren't already familiar with it. It's ear...

Rating Clarification: 4.5 StarsFrom the book blurb:"In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers (Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu) conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated— Operation Mincemeat. The purpose? To deceive the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed, and the Allie...

The operation Mincemeat was definitely one of the most important operations of WWII. The book was interesting and intriguing, with lots of personal details about the people involved, also how they fared after the war.

When a dead man becomes a highly effective spy, fools the enemy and helps win a war with the world in the balance, well, that sounds like something James Bond writer Ian Fleming would concoct. Oh wait, he did. To be specific (and more correct), Operation Mincemeat, a plan devised by Britain's intelligence agency MI5 to convince Germany that a southern attack on Europe via the Mediterranean by Allied forces, was signed off on by Fleming, one of many in Britain's spy ring. Though Fleming may not h...

Ugh why is Macintyre so good!??! This book was BEYOND anything I could have hoped for, excellent in every way, every page. Rivals The Spy and the Traitor, but this one was just so ... imaginative, yet all true.“The plan was born in the mind of a novelist and took shape through a most unlikely cast of characters: a brilliant barrister, a family of undertakers, a forensic pathologist, a gold prospector, an inventor, a submarine captain, a transvestite English spymaster, a rally driver, a pretty se...

I feel I ought to have liked this book more than I did. Lord knows, the author did his research, in commendable detail. But did he really have to include everything he learned in the final book? At some point the level of detail provided went (for me) beyond interesting and started to become stultifying. MacIntyre is a decent writer, but I think he falls into the trap that bedevils many non-fiction authors -- all the time and energy spent doing the research causes him to lose perspective. The st...

Very interesting operation that saved many Allied lives in World War II. The story suffers from "padding" and some quotes and anecdotes that just don't quite fit.

Briefly, I have to say that this is one of the most fascinating books of history I've read in a very long time. You don't even need to be a WWII buff to appreciate it -- I'm not -- but it's simply amazing. The basic story is this: it's 1943, and the Allies have plans to invade Sicily to get a foothold in Europe and defeat Hitler. But since Sicily is the most obvious place for an Allied landing, Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley (it's pronounced "Chumley") of the Naval Intelligence section of...

You can't make this stuff up! Or more precisely, you can which is what makes this story of espionage and deception so much fun. It is almost hard to believe it is all true. When I first began the book, I didn't think Ben Macintyre had enough material to make an interesting story. I presumed he would be repetitive, or worse, insert his own personal 'journey' into the narrative. I was proved decidedly wrong in both cases. So many unique, colorful characters pepper the story of Operation Mincemeat

It's a rare gem when history is unfolded for us in such a detailed and thrilling form. In 1943, Ewan Montagu of the British Naval Intelligence and Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 came together in collaboration of a complex plan of deception. The plan that was ultimately approved was to take a suitable corpse, dress it in a suitable military uniform, place certain well-planned personal items, attach to it a chained briefcase containing fake official documents and personal letters, and then drop it th...

You may not be familiar with the names Ewen Montagu or Charles Cholmondeley but you may have heard of Operation Mincemeat, The spectacularly successful in World War II deception that they masterminded. Mincemeat was a small part of operation Barclay the deception intended to cover the invasion of Italy. Mincemeat convinced The German High Command that the allies target would be Sardinia or Greece, rather than the actual target Sicily. The ruse was accomplished by convincing the Germans that they...

Fantastic book. Witty and interesting, great fun, reads like really good fiction - but it’s true!

“We fooled those of the Spaniards who assisted the Germans, we fooled the German Intelligence Service both in Spain and in Berlin, we fooled the German Operational Staff and Supreme Command, we fooled Keitel, and, finally, we fooled Hitler himself, and kept him fooled right up to the end of July." - Ewen Montagu In 1943, a Spanish fisherman found the corpse of a British soldier floating off the Spanish coast. The sinister discovery would set a series of important events in motion. The year befor...

Dad was involved in the occupation of N. Africa and in the landings at Gela on the south coast of Sicily. An army cryptanalyst attached to the U.S. navy, he and his colleagues maintained ship-to-shore communications during the successful invasion. Books relevant to his experiences there and in the Pacific have long attracted my attention.This book is an account of how the British successfully misled the Germans and Italians into believing that their European invasion plans were directed at Sardi...