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Sarah Helm

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A life In Secrets by Sarah Helm. This book is subtitled Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of World War II. It is the fascinating story of Vera Atkins of the Special Operations Executive or SOE and the secret agents she trained and sent to France.

The SOE was formed in 1940 in order to conduct sabotage and espionage in German occupied Europe as well as to assist local resistance groups.

The SOE was a secret organization sometimes called "Churchill's Secret Army" or "The Baker Street Irregulars", named after the street on which its main London office stood.

Vera Atkins who was in large part responsible for the SOE section devoted to recruiting, training, mentoring and running secret agents in France.

The agents were both men and women, several of whom were trained as wireless transmitter operators. For the most part they were not trained military personnel but civilians. At the time it was unheard of for women to be recruited for such a perilous wartime job.

A Story of Betrayal and Incompetence

The agents were told that they had a fifty percent chance of surviving and each was given a cyanide capsule in case of capture.

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The Worst Journey In The World

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The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard is the inspiring, hair raising and wonderfully written account of Scott's second expedition to the Antarctic. Apsley Cherry-Garrard was one of the youngest members of the team which set out in 1910.

The working title for the book was "Never Again, Scott, Some Penguins and the Pole" the author also toyed with the title "To Hell With Scott". "Worst Journey," "Never Again" and "To Hell" are all words which sum up this unbelievable Antarctic adventure.

In addition to being a scientific venture, Scott and four companions also hoped to become the first men to reach the South Pole. As we know they were beaten to their goal by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, only perished in a blizzard on their return journey only 11 miles from a food depot. Read the rest of this entry

Three Men In A Boat

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Jerome K. Jerome – Three Men In A Boat

No personal library should be without a copy of "Three men In A Boat." Although it was written in 1889 it is timeless. It is a book I find myself reading every other year or so. It is in the top three or four of my all time favourite good books to read.

This is also probably the funniest book you will ever come across. Although he wrote this more than a hundred years ago, Jerome K. Jerome's humour is something that we can all identify with, proving that a good sense of humour is ageless.

The book is based on events which actually happened, and as Jerome wrote in his preface to the first edition: "all that has been done is to colour them; and, for this, no extra charge has been made".

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Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Travels With A Tangerine by Tim Mackintosh-Smith

The Tangerine in question is not an orange in someone's pocket or backpack but Ibn Battutah, born in Tangier, Morocco in 1304. At the age of twenty one he set out on a journey that would eventually cover some 75,000 miles at a time when travelling was not a simple, safe or comfortable affair.

Ibn Battutah was Islam's greatest traveler and his wanderings took him to such places as Iraq, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Somalia, the coast of East Africa, the Byzantine Empire, central Asia, India and China.

Tim Mackintosh-Smith is an Arabist who studied classical Arabic at Oxford University and is also fluent in colloquial Arabic. Like IB he set out at twenty one for Arabia, eventually settling in Yemen.

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