Ian Fleming’s work for Naval Intelligence during the Second World War still remains largely secret. Alan Bardos investigates what we do know about it and how it inspired the James Bond books — and Alan’s own latest spy thriller, Hunter Class. It was often quipped in the gentlemen’s clubs of Piccadilly that Ian Fleming did […]
Hunter Class by Alan Bardos
July 1943, and Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, is under way. Lieutenant Daniel Nichols has been recruited by Ian Fleming into 30 Commando, a specialist unit that goes in ahead of the main assault to capture top secret enemy material. Nichols discovers evidence of a secret which could change the course of the conflict. […]
Review: The Second Traitor by Alex Gerlis
Alan Bardos reviews the new Second World War spy thriller from Alex Gerlis, The Second Traitor. The Second Traitor is the latest novel in Alex Gerlis’s Double Agent quartet, which follows the trials of two Soviet spies in the British Secret Service from the 1930s to the late 1950s; from the rise of Nazism to […]
The long legacy of the First World War
Alan Bardos looks back at the long legacy of the First World War, which still causes conflict over a century later. This August marked the 110th anniversary of the start of the First World War and, with conflict in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, it seems an appropriate moment to trace how the war, […]
Historia review: Munich Wolf by Rory Clements
Alan Bardos reviews Munich Wolf, the first in a new series of Second World War spy novels by Rory Clements. He finds it “engaging and well researched“. Hot on the heels of Rory Clements’s fantastic Tom Wilde espionage novels, comes his new series featuring Detective Sebastian Wolff. Staying in the pre-war era of the first […]
Rising Tide by Alan Bardos
November 1940, and Lieutenant Daniel Nichols, a former pacifist turned crusader, is wounded taking part in the Royal Navy’s carrier born air raid on the Italian Battle Fleet in Taranto. Six months later Sándor Braun, a British double agent, escorts a Japanese delegation around Taranto and discovers that they are planning a similar attack. But […]
From Taranto to Pearl Harbor – spies and inspiration
To mark the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Alan Bardos explains how uncovering a tale of spies helped him link Britain’s attack on Taranto in 1940 to the Japanese strike – and inspired his new novel, Rising Tide. I have always been captivated by the daring and skill of the Fleet […]