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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A deep, dry well.,
By James Hercules Sutton (Des Moines, IA (USA)) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Room 39;: A study in Naval Intelligence (Hardcover)
This book reviews the role of Intelligence work in England during WWII and lessons learned from it. McLachlan identifies successes and failures, good practices and bad, then ends with thirteen rules that he deems essential to the craft. He applies scholarly skills to his task, interviewing men and borrowing liberally from published and unpublished works, and includes incidents known and previously unknown. Read together with similar books (by Len Deighton, R. V. Jones, and Churchill himself), one gets an appreciation of the scope and monumental effort by British "Naval" Intelligence during the Second War. The inventiveness and discipline of those in British intelligence comes through loud and clear.The book itself is difficult to read, because of bookish prose, the very item of style that characterized the intelligence efforts it describes. Many involved were academics. McLachlan endorses their use fully in intelligence work, and argues against locating intelligence within the armed services. The book also describes collaborative efforts between British and American intelligence at the time of the creation of the OSS and later the CIA. Unfortunately, many lessons learned by the British at their cost were and are neglected to this day, particularly the gentlemanly approach to interrogation. And covert operations were never conducted or proposed by the intelligence service in Room 39. What happens when they are mixed is explained at length in the unauthorized history of the CIA, "Legacy of Ashes." That book should be read for contrast against this one, for it is style that has made all the difference for both countries in results achieved. McLachlan also describes Ian Fleming's significant role in the enterprise, a matter of interest in itself, as it indicates the origins of the James Bond adventures; Fleming's home in the Bahamas was called "Golden Eye." But oddly, the book's Index of Names doesn't include "Fleming." Also described is the role of the Oxford University Press in printing maps, code books and other war material, a contribution I hadn't come across before. This book will be of greatest use to those engaged in Intelligence, historians, or those who pursue a deep understanding of the Second War. But the recreational reader may find it a deep, dry well.
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