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Book of the Week: Double Cross

Book of the Week: Double Cross: Episode 5

Double Cross

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Double Cross, Episode 5

June 1944 and the Allies prepare for the Normandy landings, taking the Germans by surprise

June, 1944: Germans are surprised at Normandy - thanks to double agents of the British secret service. Read by Jonathan Keeble.

Written by Ben Macintyre.

It is June 1944 and the Allies prepare for the landings in Normandy, taking the Germans by surprise, thanks to the work of the double agents working for the British secret service.

D-Day, 6 June 1944, the turning point of the Second World War, was a victory of arms. But it was also a triumph for a different kind of operation: one of deceit, aimed at convincing the Nazis that Calais and Norway, not Normandy, were the targets of the 150,000-strong invasion force. The deception involved every branch of Allied wartime intelligence - the Bletchley Park code-breakers, MI5, MI6, SOE, Scientific Intelligence, the FBI and the French Resistance. But at its heart was the 'Double Cross System', a team of double agents controlled by the secret Twenty Committee, so named because twenty in Roman numerals forms a double cross. 

The key D-Day spies were just five in number, and one of the oddest military units ever assembled: a bisexual Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot, a Serbian seducer, a wildly imaginative Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming, and a hysterical Frenchwoman whose obsessive love for her pet dog very nearly wrecked the entire deception. Their enterprise was saved from catastrophe by a shadowy sixth spy whose heroic sacrifice is here revealed for the first time. Under the direction of an eccentric but brilliant intelligence officer in tartan trousers, working from a smoky lair in St James's, these spies would weave a web of deception so intricate that it ensnared Hitler's army and helped to carry thousands of troops across the Channel in safety. 

These double agents were, variously, brave, treacherous, fickle, greedy and inspired. They were not conventional warriors, but their masterpiece of deceit saved countless lives. Their codenames were Bronx, Brutus, Treasure, Tricycle and Garbo. This is their story.

Ben Macintyre is the bestselling author of Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat.


Reader: Jonathan Keeble
Abridger: Libby Spurrier


Producer: Joanna Green
A Pier Production For BBC Radio 4.

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Second World War story about a team of agents recruited to work with a secret committee

Second World War story about a team of agents (codenames Bronx, Brutus, Treasure, Tricycle and Garbo) recruited to work as part of the Double Cross System run by the secret Twenty Committee.

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