Barbreck Publishers – The Bell Bookshop

A suspicion of spies

Emma — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

1916, Russia. A 17-year-old Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale is working for his father, taking submarines from Vladivostok to St Petersburg for the Russian Imperial Navy. He takes a submarine out for sea trials along with a naval dockyard crew he’d never met before. Spotting a group of German ships, he gives the order to attack and sinks four of them. On returning to Kronstadt, breaking free from an anti-submarine net with just 30 minutes of oxygen left, he opens the hatch to find every gun in the port facing him and his crew. Fluent in Russian, he quickly defuses the situation. For this action he is awarded by Tsar Nicholas II the Order of St. Stanislav and the Order of St. Anne, imperial Russia’s highest knighthood for military valour and ‘bravery in battle’.

Biffy, born and raised in Odessa, soon learnt to operate at all levels of Odessan society. Clearly highly intelligent, by 16 he was studying Naval Architecture and Naval Engineering in St Petersburg – broadening his education further in the waterfront bars of both Odessa and St. Petersburg.

Aged 18 he was engaged by Naval Intelligence as an interpreter on account of his language skills, English, Russian, French, Polish and German. He would soon grow into a buccaneering member of the British Secret Intelligence Service in a career spanning forty years which Biffy described as ‘40 years of licensed thuggery.’

Biffy appears in over 60 books and websites and yet no one has ever written the story of his life. ‘He was rather like a ghost one knew was there but the apparition never stood still long enough for a clear view.‘ A Suspicion of Spies is the first ever biography of Biffy and tells the intriguing story of an extraordinary man – suave, sophisticated, genial and rich but also a ruthless and effective spymaster. Following his career, that spanned the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and beyond, A Suspicion of Spies is awash with stories of adventure, bravery, glamour and exoticism.

Biffy was a lifelong friend of Ian Fleming and many have considered him to be the blueprint for Bond. There is likely some truth in this. The tales of action and intrigue found in this comprehensive biography could be taken straight from the pages of From Russia with Love, which Biffy acted as ‘consultant’ for.

This biography is the story of the complicated intrigues of the world of intelligence. It is what the British are good at and Biffy was one of the best.

Common Sense Wisdom

Emma — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

For over fifty years, Pepper de Callier has been collecting quotes. But not just any quotes. Throughout his research and engagement with people as the founder and Executive Director of Prague Leadership Institute, he has identified quotes that have changed lives. Drawn from the world’s greatest writers, thinkers and leaders from across the ages, and illuminated by Pepper’s insights as one of Europe’s preeminent career and life coaches, Common-Sense Wisdom: A Trusted Companion for your Life and Career Journey has the power to trigger self-awareness, honest reflection, and the compass points to help you find your own direction. Whether you are a CEO, recent graduate, or working your way through the normal ups and downs of personal and professional growth, these common-sense insights will help you view challenges and opportunities in a whole new way, and turn around even the most difficult of days.

A Dangerous Enterprise

Emma — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Between 1942 and 1944 a very small, very secret, very successful clandestine unit of the Royal Navy, operated between Dartmouth in Devon, and the Brittany Coast in France. It was a crossing of about 100 miles, every yard of it dangerous. The unit was called the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla: crewed by 125 officers and men, it became the most highly decorated Royal Naval unit of the Second World War.
The 15th MGBF was an extraordinary group of men thrown together in the most secret of adventures. Very few were regular Royal Naval officers: instead the unit was made up of mostly Royal Naval Volunteer Officers and ‘duration only’ sailors. Their home was a converted paddle steamer and luxury yacht, but their work could not have been more serious.

Their mission was to ferry agents of SIS and SOE to pinpoint landing sites on the Brittany coast in Occupied France. Once they had landed their agents, together with stores for the Resistance, they picked up evaders, escaped POWs who had had the good fortune to be collected by escape lines run by M19, as well as returning SIS and SOE agents.

It is a story that is inextricably entwined with that of the many agents they were responsible for – Pierre Hentic, Yves Le Tac, Virginia Hall, Albert Hué, Jeannie Rousseau, Suzanne Warengham, François Mitterrand and Mathilde Carré, as well as many others. Without the Flotilla, such intelligence gathering networks as Jade Fitzroy and Alliance would never have developed, and SOE’s VAR Line and MI9’s Shelburne Escape Line would never have been realised.

Drawing on a huge amount of research on both sides of the Channel, including private archives of many of the families involved, A Dangerous Enterprise brings the story of this most clandestine of operations brilliantly to life.