Operation Mincemeat — Ben Macintyre

Macintyre reconstructs the 1943 British deception operation in which a corpse was dressed as a Royal Marines officer, provided with false documents, and floated off the Spanish coast to mislead German intelligence about the Allied invasion of Sicily. The operation worked — the Germans redeployed forces from Sicily to Greece and Sardinia. The book is as interested in the remarkable eccentrics who devised and executed the plan as in the plan itself, and it examines how strategic deception functions with an analytical precision that the thriller format rarely permits.

Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction. 'A brilliantly told story. Macintyre has a genius for finding the extraordinary within the historical record.' — Sunday Times. 'The best account of one of the most audacious intelligence operations ever mounted.' — Daily Telegraph