A rousing tale of espionage and unsung valor, this is the captivating true story of Vera Atkins, Great Britain's spymistress from the age of 25. With her fierce intelligence, blunt manner, personal courage, and exceptional informants, Vera ran countless missions throughout the 1930s. After rising to the leadership echelon in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert intelligence agency formed by Winston Churchill, she became head of a clandestine army in World War II. Her team went deep behind enemy lines, linked up with resistance fighters, destroyed vital targets, helped Allied pilots escape capture, assassinated German soldiers, and radioed information back to London. As the biographer of her mentor in the SOE, William Stevenson was the only person Vera Atkins trusted to record her story.
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About the Author
William Stevenson was trained in aerial espionage as a British naval fighter pilot during World War II. A respected historian and expert on covert warfare, he is the author of 16 books including A Man Called Intrepid and Ninety Minutes at Entebbe. He lives in Toronto.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
53 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Publishing farce,
This review is from: Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II (Hardcover)
The author of Spymistress states that Vera Atkins had "lustrous black hair" whereas in fact she was a blue-eyed blonde, as anyone who ever met her could have told him.
If the author cannot get the colour of his subject's hair right it is hardly surprising that much of the rest of the book turns out to be nonsense too. The fantasies woven here have no interest. The author trivialises a great woman's life story. He does so in the knowledge that the dead cannot answer back. The true story of Vera Atkins's life is far more compelling than anything in this book. I know this because I spent five years researching her extraordinary story across the world. I interviewed her at length before she died and I had sole access to her archive. I am writing this review not to promote my own book but to defend Vera's integrity. This false "biography" desecrates the memory of a remarkable woman, misses the real story entirely, and brings the American publishing industry into disrepute. In short, it is a publishing farce.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Take a Pass,
By leafreader "leafreader" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, The Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II (Paperback)
I had such high hopes for this book but I was entirely disappointed. First, I bought this book on an impulse because the topic and the title appealed to a modern feminist like me. So I bought it... and I tried to read it. I really did. For a whole plane ride back from the Bahamas (almost 8 hours). It was torturous. First, it seems that the author is recounting some childhood story of having met Vera Atkins. He talks about her sex appeal. Huh? I was somewhat baffled by this introduction.
Moving on, the next few chapters all seem to come out of nowhere. The author jumps around without any warning. He rambles and lists a litany of "facts" about Vera's life. It's as good as a second grader recounting a day in life by simply listing all that had happened. What's the point? Tell me something useful. Tell me something that helps me understand Vera as a person. Tell me about her inner conflicts. Tell me about the events that had taken place and the people who influenced her. Don't tell me what she had for breakfast!!! So at the end of my 8 hour flight, I gave up. I got through first 6 chapters. Yes, I cannot comment on the book's entirety. But I've seen enough. As a side note, the writing skills of the author is questionable. Often there are awkwardly worded sentences. The overall impression is choppy and dissonant. So on top of the dismal content, you cannot get any pleasure in reading for the sake of reading. If you ask me, I say take a pass.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Read, But,
By rol (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, The Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II (Paperback)
Seldom would I give a book so poorly written four stars, or think about giving it five stars, but this is not a book one would read for its prose or even for a coherent narrative. (The author's prose while intelligible is not at all graceful and his account sometimes jumps around in ways that are hard to follow or leave unresolved issues recently raised.) Nevertheless, the story is fascinating, and reveals facts likely to be little known to all but WW II history buffs. I certainly learned much I knew little about (e.g. The number of Brits and others who were parachuted or otherwise landed in France to work with the French resistance to sabotage Nazi war efforts, the number of heroic women who risked and sometimes lost their lives as sabateurs and spies, and the degree of competition within the British military and spy bureaucracies that not only hampered some counter-nazi efforts but also had deadly consequence for secret agents and their sources within the German government) Much of the book seems to draw on recently declassified documents so aspects of what is revealed may be new even to those who at one time but not recently thought they knew most of what occurred in England's clandestine war efforts. One caveat - a one star review claims much of the book isn't worth reading because it is factually untrue and is a misleading history of the book's central character, even to the point of getting her hair color wrong. I cannot adjudicate this claim, but it does matter. It also seems to me that in instances where this book's narrative disagrees with that of Helms, the author of the one star review who has also written about Vera Adlins (Could he be related to the former CIA head?) there is a possibility that much in each version is correct and that certain disagreements accurately reflect conflicting memories and source, including perhaps differing memories by the same sources since memories are constructed and can change over time.
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