The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
At the outbreak of the Second World War, the charismatic and hugely attractive Nancy Wake was an Australian living with her French businessman husband in Marseilles. Immediately, she plunged into resistance work which resulted in her having to flee from France,...
Russian spies have moved into cyberspace. Their digital fingerprint is on the 2016 American elections, and all over the cultural wars. They find existing cracks in Western discourse, around Brexit or Black Lives Matter, for example, and seek to rip them still wider....
Are we in a new Cold War? If not, how is it best to describe the struggle between China and Western democracies? Some have suggested “hot peace”— but such wordplay doesn’t get us far. In fact, as far as intelligence and national security are concerned, the West is...
Stalingrad: Researching the Lighthouse Stalingrad, the greatest battle of any theatre of conflict during the Second World War. That’s the story I had always been told growing up. As a nine-year-old boy in the mid-1970s, I was given as a birthday present a book of the...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon From the Publisher Chiselbury Publishing was founded 2011 to make the works of James Leasor, one of the bestselling and most prolific British authors of the second half of the...
The Rome Escape Line Lt Colonel Sam Derry’s memoir is an intriguing account of daring escapes and the day-to-day struggles of a clandestine organisation operating under the nose of an enemy who is actively hunting it down. Derry was taken prisoner during the North...
Your father, Sam Derry was an extraordinary man and his key role in The Rome Escape Line was just part of a number of impressive exploits. What else did Sam achieve in the war, after all he won both an MC and DSO? He started the War as a territorial officer with a...
My Enemy’s Enemy: The German-Japanese Intelligence Alliance The years leading up to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour saw a strengthening of diplomatic relations between Japan and Germany, and growing cooperation between their intelligence services. This is where I...
I sometimes wonder why wonderful factual stories are dramatized and the historical information changed to create a better story. I understand it is dramatic licence and perhaps it makes for a more exciting story particularly for a movie or TV series like The Crown or...
I keep overhearing people debating between themselves the comparison of Robert Oppenheimer and Alan Turing, his British near contemporary - Turing was six years younger - who was the originator of modern computing. I feel as if this is also a debate that I ought to...
