Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets - Softcover

Stafford, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1909609986 ISBN 13: 9781909609983

Publisher: Thistle Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

“Stafford is a superb researcher and has a feel for when ‘secret’ means ‘significant’ and when it did not... This fascinating book is, among other things, a useful reminder of how complicated the Grand Alliance actually was.”
New York Times

“Stafford has the precious gift of making technical subjects easy to follow... This is most readable history.”
The Times

“An intriguing book which makes a very good read.”
Irish Independent

At the very heart of the special relationship between Britain and the United States lies an extraordinary sharing of secret intelligence. This unique alliance was built during the Second World War thanks largely to the close relationship forged between the United States’ President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

As the two leaders communicated almost daily by secret telegram and telephone, personal meetings and messages through intermediaries to develop an unprecedented level of trust, so their respective intelligences agencies began to share their closely guarded secrets in the fields of code breaking, human intelligence, and secret operations.

Yet simultaneously each national leader sought to protect and advance his own country’s interests and thus on occasion withhold rather than share his secrets. How Roosevelt and Churchill managed this delicate task and yet still laid the foundations of the closest intelligence relationship between two nations the world has ever known lies at the heart of this gripping narrative.

About this title

About the Author

David Stafford is an historian and former diplomat who has written extensively on espionage, intelligence, Churchill, and the Second World War. The former Project Director at the Centre for The Study of the Two World Wars at the University of Edinburgh, he is now an Honorary Fellow of the University and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where he and his wife now live. In April 2005 he was appointed by the Prime Minister to write the official history of SOE in Italy, which was published by the Bodley Head in March 2011.

From AudioFile

The much vaunted cooperation between Great Britain and the United States during WWII has long been due for reassessment, and this study of the intelligence services of both countries may signal its start. Stafford's close examination suggests as much competition as cooperation, for the ambitions of both leaders--Roosevelt and Churchill--and their national interests, beyond winning the war, were largely incompatible. In a forceful narration Richard McGonagle produces near lifelike imitations of the two men--the urbane, upper-Hudson Roosevelt and the gravelly, sardonic Churchill--that at times brim over with their delight in each other and their work. Underneath, however, boils a tension that always threatens to break out, as the two try to balance the competing demands of their intelligence services against common strategic interests. In a voice familiar to those of us who cut our teeth on TV documentaries like "Victory at Sea," McGonagle recreates those tense moments between Allies whose secret interests were worlds apart, yet who nonetheless assembled the most effective spy network in the history of the world. P.E.F. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Thistle Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1909609986
• ISBN 13: 9781909609983
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356