John Keegan,
Most books about spying, special opera- tions, the secret world work much better as fiction than they do as fact. Colonel Z by Anthony Read and David Fisher (Hodder and Stoughton) reveals most of the non- fictional flaws. No achievement claimed for the spy or secret organisation under discussion can be validated, and no state- ment made can be verified by any means open to the general reader. How refreshing to find a personal memoir of special operations which is wholly convincing. David Smiley's Albanian Assignment is about the war-time years he spent in that country, trying and largely failing to lead its resistants against the Axis. Despite the fruitlessness of it all, he came to love the Albanians – he does not even seem to have disliked the Communist apparatchicks among them, or their fellow-travellers at SOE headquarters. But then, Smiley is a gentleman. How the Smileys came to be with us is the subject of Maurice Keen's marvellous Chivalry. The subject attracts, and defeats, mediaeval historians by the dozen. This one has dealt with it trium- phantly, making even the uninstructed feel that they understand what it was to be a knight and how he stood in feudal society. Few people have the gift of combining scholarship with readability, but this au- thor is one of them.
Previous page
