Wow! eBook
SOE in 100 Objects
Author(s): Belinda Curwen (Author)
- Publisher: The History Press
- Publication Date: November 11, 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 400 pages
- ISBN-10: 0750997966
- ISBN-13: 9780750997966
Book Description
By the summer of 1940, as France fell and war raged across Europe, the invasion of Britain – once unthinkable – seemed all but inevitable. It would take fresh thinking and bold moves to turn the tide of the war: a challenge that Churchill and his Cabinet would be set to conquer in no small part due to their formation of a ‘fifth column’. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was soon born, its purpose to hamstring the enemy from the shadows. Agents drawn from diverse professions and countries were trained in subversion and espionage before being dropped behind enemy lines to mobilize resistance and disrupt the occupying forces. From local operations in France and wider Europe, SOE’s missions would spread worldwide to pave the way for D-Day and help halt the Axis war machine in its tracks.
SOE in 100 Objects picks up the clues they left behind – a button compasses in Greece, a silk map in Burma – and follows their trail across land and sea, from moonlight flights to high-risk missions and, ultimately, hard-won liberation.
Editorial Reviews
Review
This ambitious objectification of SOE history encompasses everything from the fish oil needed to create nitroglycerine to dead rats stuffed with explosives, from a Lysander aircraft to a ‘Shetland bus’, and from heavy water to the blackmarket silkworm cocoons essential for making parachutes. Collectively they create a material history that is at once deeply telling and lightly told.
— Clare Mulley, author of ‘The Spy Who Loved’, ‘The Women Who Flew for Hitler’, and ‘Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless Second World War Resistance Fighter, Elzbieta Zawacka’.
Based on a wide variety of objects and events, this book provides fascinating insights into the workings of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and its associates. … Well-researched and engagingly written, this is an essential book for those interested in SOE and undercover operations.
— Alexander Stilwell, author of ‘The Comet Escape Line’
SOE in 100 Objects brings fresh insight to the inner workings of Churchill’s most secret department. A fascinating and worthy addition to the history of SOE and the people who risked everything to resist the Nazis.
— Sophie Jackson, author of ‘SOE’s Balls of Steel’
