Sublime

The agents were using poems for their codes. Or famous quotations. Or anything they could easily remember. This concept of clandestine coding had been adopted by SOE because of a theory, traditional in Intelligence, that if an agent were caught and searched it was better security if his code were in his head. I had a gut feeling right from the star

From the 1550s onwards a steady stream of literature warns of the numerous cons that could be practised upon the unwary. Apparently a small industry making loaded dice existed within the King’s Bench and Marshalsea prisons, but the master of the craft was a man named Bird who lived in Holborn and produced fourteen different types of loaded dice to

In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was secure in the belief that they did nothing else. If a man could not love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time? Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr Farebrother, were great bores, and Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards: what was he to do for relaxation?

Well, in truth he was very unlikely to be prosecuted. A few people were: Richard Bett, for example, a tailor from Essex, was convicted in 1565 for the size of his hose; and in the same year Richard Walweyn, who worked as a servant in London, was arrested for wearing ‘a very monstrous and outraygeous great payre of hose’, a charge that closely follo

Major offences in SOE – such as leakages to C, which were considered almost as treasonable as leakages to the enemy – were dealt with by the Executive Council. Minor offences, such as being right, were disciplined by the directorate in which they occurred.

The rest of my course was going to Bletchley. As for its solitary failure, an interview had been arranged for me with ‘some potty outfit in Baker Street, an open house for misfits’. If even they didn’t want me, I would be regarded as unmarketable. ‘It’s called Inter Services Research Bureau,’ said the sergeant. He lowered his voice. ‘It’s got anoth