Secrets of Churchill's War Rooms


Book Description

This magnificent new volume gives you exclusive access to the Churchill War Rooms, bringing you closer than ever before to where Churchill not only ran the war - but won it.




Churchill's Secret Messenger


Book Description

A riveting story of World War II and the courage of one young woman as she is drafted into Churchill’s overseas spy network, aiding the French Resistance behind enemy lines and working to liberate Nazi-occupied Paris… London, 1941: In a cramped bunker in Winston Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms, underneath Westminster’s Treasury building, civilian women huddle at desks, typing up confidential documents and reports. Since her parents were killed in a bombing raid, Rose Teasdale has spent more hours than usual in Room 60, working double shifts, growing accustomed to the burnt scent of the Prime Minister’s cigars permeating the stale air. Winning the war is the only thing that matters, and she will gladly do her part. And when Rose’s fluency in French comes to the attention of Churchill himself, it brings a rare yet dangerous opportunity. Rose is recruited for the Special Operations Executive, a secret British organization that conducts espionage in Nazi-occupied Europe. After weeks of grueling training, Rose parachutes into France with a new codename: Dragonfly. Posing as a cosmetics saleswoman in Paris, she ferries messages to and from the Resistance, knowing that the slightest misstep means capture or death. Soon Rose is assigned to a new mission with Lazare Aron, a French Resistance fighter who has watched his beloved Paris become a shell of itself, with desolate streets and buildings draped in Swastikas. Since his parents were sent to a German work camp, Lazare has dedicated himself to the cause with the same fervor as Rose. Yet Rose’s very loyalty brings risks as she undertakes a high-stakes prison raid, and discovers how much she may have to sacrifice to justify Churchill’s faith in her . . . "A rousing historical novel." - The Akron Beacon Journal, Best Books of the Year for Churchill's Secret Messenger




Churchill War Rooms Guidebook


Book Description

On May 10, 1940, Britain's new prime minister strode purposefully down to the basement of an anonymous government building and entered a top secret command center. "This," growled Winston Churchill, "is the room from which I will run the war." At the war's end, Churchill and his colleagues left the chamber and locked the door behind them--and the War Rooms remained there, untouched and little known, until the early 1980s. Today, those historic chambers are on display as the Churchill War Rooms exhibit. The Churchill War Rooms Guidebook provides an inside view of Britain's wartime nerve center. In this concise, but informative reference, readers can meet the people who worked at the War Rooms, see how the work carried out in this underground bunker helped Britain win the war, and delve into the life story of the man himself--Winston Churchill. Highly illustrated, this is an accessible overview of one of Britain's most significant historic sites.




Secrets of Churchills War Rooms Compact Ed


Book Description

On May 10, 1940, Britain's new prime minister strode purposefully down to the basement of an anonymous government building and entered a top secret command center. "This," growled Winston Churchill, "is the room from which I will run the war." At the war's end, Churchill and his colleagues left the chamber and locked the door behind them--and there the War Rooms remained, untouched and little known, until the early 1980s. Today, those historic chambers are on display as the Churchill War Rooms exhibit. In Secrets of Churchill's War Rooms, you can go behind the glass partitions that separate the War Rooms from the visiting public, closer than ever before to where Churchill not only ran the war--but won it. With up-close photography of details in every room and access to sights unavailable on a simple tour of Churchill War Rooms, the book provides are views that few people in the world have ever seen. Go behind closed doors to sit at Churchill's desk, open up long-abandoned drawers, and sift through seventy-year-old papers. See the anxious scratches on the arms of Sir Winston's chair, pick up the phone that he used to speak to the president of the United States, and examine the map that loomed over his bed as he took his famous afternoon naps. Including more than two hundred detailed images and firsthand memories of Churchill as a leader, boss, father, husband, and man, Secrets of Churchill's War Rooms tells the fascinating story of the work carried out in these underground offices.




Churchill's War in Words


Book Description

Churchill's War in Words transports the reader back to the storm-struck days of the Second World War. Focussing only on words used at the time, it reveals the way that Winston Churchill talked about the conflict in public and in private - and the way that he himself was viewed at the time by family, friends, politicians, military leaders, staff, voters, allies and enemies. Presented in chronological order and accompanied by short year-by-year introductions, the quotations convey afresh the full force of Churchill's oratory, the wit he displayed in the face of often appalling odds, and the hopes and fears that he inspired in those around him. Together they reveal to the modern reader what it was truly like to be locked in a struggle in which victory - or total defeat - was yet to be decided. Together they tell the extraordinary story of Churchill's War in Words.




Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare


Book Description

Six gentlemen, one goal: the destruction of Hitler's war machine In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world's leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men—along with three others—formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Giles Milton's Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a gripping and vivid narrative of adventure and derring-do that is also, perhaps, the last great untold story of the Second World War.




The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish


Book Description

‘My mother thought I was working for the Ministry of Ag. and Fish.’ So begins Noreen Riols’ compelling memoir of her time as a member of Churchill’s ‘secret army’, the Special Operations Executive. It was 1943, just before her eighteenth birthday, Noreen received her call-up papers, and was faced with either working in a munitions factory or joining the Wrens. A typically fashion-conscious young woman, even in wartime, Noreen opted for the Wrens - they had better hats. But when one of her interviewers realized she spoke fluent French, she was directed to a government building on Baker Street. It was SOE headquarters, where she was immediately recruited into F-Section, led by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster. From then until the end of the war, Noreen worked with Buckmaster and her fellow operatives to support the French Resistance fighting for the Allied cause. Sworn to secrecy, Noreen told no one that she spent her days meeting agents returning from behind enemy lines, acting as a decoy, passing on messages in tea rooms and picking up codes in crossword puzzles. Vivid, witty, insightful and often moving, this is the story of one young woman’s secret war, offering readers an authentic and compelling insight into what really went on in Churchill’s ‘secret army’ from one of its last surviving members.




The Long Flight Home


Book Description

A USA Today Bestseller Inspired by fascinating, true, yet little-known events during World War II, The Long Flight Home is a testament to the power of courage in our darkest hours—a moving, masterfully written story of love and sacrifice. It is September 1940—a year into the war—and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around the Epping Forest home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents to influenza as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons with Bertie. All her birds are extraordinary to Susan—loyal, intelligent, beautiful—but none more so than Duchess. Hatched from an egg that Susan incubated in a bowl under her grandfather’s desk lamp, Duchess shares a special bond with Susan and an unusual curiosity about the human world. Thousands of miles away in Buxton, Maine, young crop-duster pilot Ollie Evans decides to join Britain’s Royal Air Force. His quest brings him to Epping and the National Pigeon Service, where Susan is involved in a new, covert mission to air-drop hundreds of homing pigeons in German-occupied France. Many will not survive. Those that do will bring home crucial information. Soon a friendship between Ollie and Susan deepens, but when his plane is downed behind enemy lines, both know how remote the chances of reunion must be. Yet Duchess will become an unexpected lifeline, relaying messages between Susan and Ollie as war rages on—and proving, at last, that hope is never truly lost. “Hlad adeptly drives home the devastating civilian cost of the war.” —Booklist




Weird War Two: Strange Facts and Tales from the World's Weirdest Conflict


Book Description

Welcome to the wonderfully weird World War Two... The Second World War is the bloodiest on record. It was the first total war in history when civilians; men, women and children were in the front line as never before. With so many millions involved, the rumour machine went into overdrive, tall stories built on fear of the unknown. With so much at stake, boffins battled with each other to build ever more bizarre weapons to out-gun the enemy. Nazi Germany alone had so many government-orchestrated foibles that they would be funny if they were not so tragic. Parachuting sheep? Pilot pigeons? Rifles that fire round corners? Men who never were? You will find them all in these pages, the weird, wonderful and barely believable of World War Two




The Hidden Places of World War II


Book Description

A grand tour of the secret places - some known and many unknown - where WWII history was made.