276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Man Who Never Was

£4.115£8.23Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

At an auction, 20th Century Fox bought the film rights to his book. The result was a lavish Anglo-American co-production shot in one of the cinema’s newest widescreen technologies known as Cinemascope.

There were severe doubts about the viability of Mincemeat, but Churchill himself, who loved these sort of cloak-and-dagger operations, gave his personal approval and the operation was on. General Sir Archibald Nye, the deputy to the Chiefs-of-Staff Committee, was asked to write a personal letter to General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of Allied forces in North Africa, revealing details of the false invasion plan. Admiral Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations, was asked to write a personal letter to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham again giving away key details. What touched me most in these books was the tombstone at Nostra Senora de la Soledad cemetery in Huelva, hurriedly laid by Hillgarth to prevent the Germans digging the body up. In 1997, the British government finally made amends and added this sentence at the base: "Glyndwr Michael, served as Major William Martin, RM." Lentz, Robert J. (10 January 2014). Gloria Grahame, Bad Girl of Film Noir: The Complete Career. McFarland. p.201. ISBN 9780786487226– via Google Books.In reality this had been written by Montagu’s female clerk. In the film it was written by her flatmate, Lucy Sherwood, who was having an affair with an RAF flier. On the day that Lucy is told her boyfriend had been shot down, she gets home to find O’Reilly waiting for her. Barely knowing what she is saying, Lucy sobs that the man to whom she is engaged is dead. Lucy is played with un-British passion by the American actress Gloria Grahame. In January 1943, with Allied victory in North Africa fast approaching, Allied planners decided on the Italian island of Sicily as the next target for operations, with the invasion earmarked for no later than July that year. However, Sicily was an obvious target and so British intelligence set about deceiving Hitler and Nazi High Command into thinking that the next Allied targets were Greece and the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. The tale of Major Martin Operation Barclay was set up with plans to create the impression that an entire army group existed in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was to create a lot of noise, as though planning to invade Greece. General Henry Wilson was put in charge of this imaginary army. Double agents were to feed disinformation to the Germans about landings in Greece. Meanwhile, General Patton was apparently put in charge of an operation to invade Sardinia and Corsica. As part of Barclay, two intelligence officials came together to mastermind a brilliant additional and original aspect to the deception plan. Montagu led a small group of ingenious British planners who managed to put false documents on a corpse (“the man who never was”) that drifted ashore in southern Spain and gave the Germans every good reason to think that the phony invasion plans were real.

The plan, known as ‘Operation Mincemeat’, was full of risks. Would the Spanish realise the body had not died by drowning but had died of other causes some time before? Would they hand over the documents to the Germans? If they did, would the Germans take the bait and believe the documents were authentic? The Radio Times wrote, "the picture may appear overly reverent by today's standards. But this is still a crucial wartime spy tale that is well worth watching." [9] The Goon Show parody [ edit ] A first edition, first printing published by Evans in 1953. A very good book without inscriptions. In a very good unclipped wrapper with some spotting to the front panel. With chipping to the spine tips and to the corners. Accompanied by Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat published by Bloomsbury in 2010. A near fine book in like wrapper. "The Man Who Never Was" is a non-fiction book by Ewen Montagu, published in 1953. It recounts a daring World War II intelligence operation, codenamed "Operation Mincemeat." The book details how British authorities created a fictional persona, Major Martin, complete with a fabricated identity, personal effects, and false documents. They then used a corpse carrying these materials, placing it off the coast of Spain, which was under Nazi influence. The goal was to deceive the Germans about the Allied invasion of Southern Europe, ultimately diverting German forces from the real target: Sicily. Montagu's book masterfully unveils the intricate planning and execution of this ingenious deception, highlighting the ingenuity and audacity of wartime intelligence operations. After the war Jean Leslie married, Cholmondeley chased locusts and intelligence in Arabia, Hillgarth planted trees in Ireland. Montagu became a pillar of Anglo-Jewish society, was raised to the bench and became notorious for terrorising his court. In a characteristically deft addition, Macintyre quotes the judgment of the appeal court in the case of one of his victims: "Discourtesy, even gross discourtesy, to counsel, however regrettable, could not be a ground for quashing a conviction." The documents were passed on to Berlin, where they were assessed by Intelligence Chief Lieutenant Colonel Baron von Roenne. Although he might have had his doubts, he passed them on as genuine. When they finally reached his desk, Hitler was completely taken in by them. Duping HitlerBritish intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a homeless man who died in London in January 1943. Originally from Aberbargoed in Monmouthshire in south Wales, Glyndwr had an unfortunate life. His father committed suicide when he was young and his mother had died when he was 31. He’d struggled to hold down a job and eventually drifted to London, where he died on 24 January 1943 from complications as a result of having ingested rat poison.

He had directed a few films before The Man Who Never Was, but appointing him director ensured that the film would have both a dramatic and a convincing look, with scenes ranging from the streets of wartime London to the Spanish fishing port of Huelva (where filming actually took place), and from the cramped basement headquarters of naval intelligence to the interior of submarine HMS Seraph. Still secret The body of Major Martin was found at around 9:30am on 30 April 1943 by a local fisherman, who duly informed the local authorities. On 1 May a perfunctory post-mortem was performed by two Spanish doctors in the presence of the British Vice-Consul and the cause of death was listed as ‘asphyxiation through immersion in the sea’. Major Martin’s briefcase along with its contents of secret papers were taken into safe keeping by the Spanish Navy. Major Martin was buried in Huelva Roman Catholic Cemetery, with full military honours the following day. Ewen Montagu, the author of The Man Who Never Was, quotes this adage as he describes British efforts to misdirect the German military from the Allies’ invasion of Sicily during the Second World War. One might consider a major omission in the film was that the overall deception plan was to have the Germans anticipate the landings in the Eastern Med and in the west against Corsica and Sardinia. Thus, positing the hopeful cutting off of Sicily to dry off the rest of the Italian vine all while allowing for further movement against either or both middle Italy/ Southern France (actually the object in Operation ANVIL in mid 1944) to be attached from potential bases on Sardinia and Corsica. This one doesn't disappoint. The book follows a little known bit of espionage during the Mediterranean campaign of WWII. Essentially, the Brits float a body ashore to Spain, knowing that the Germans will get it and, more importantly, the letters he's carrying which are rife with misdirection. Seems like a simple plan, but it proves to be much more difficult than originally imagined.

In the early hours of 30 April 1943, a corpse, wearing the uniform of an officer in the Royal Marines, was slipped into the waters off the south-west coast of Spain. With it was a briefcase, in which were papers detailing an imminent Allied invasion of Greece. As the British had anticipated, the supposedly neutral government of Fascist Spain turned the papers over to the Nazi High Command, who swallowed the story whole. From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: German signals intercepted by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) showed Operation Mincemeat had worked so well that even four hours after the invasion began, 21 Axis aircraft left Sicily to reinforce Sardinia.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment