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“... Ralph Bennett’s first book on intelligence in the Second World War – Ultra in the West – dealt with the Normandy invasion and the campaign in North-West Europe. This volume appears later, in what he calls ‘an unnatural order’, because the material on which both are based was released to the public records without regard for chronological sequence ...”

“... According to the dust-jacket of this book at least 750,000 German troops died of malnutrition and disease in US Army camps in North-West Europe after the end of the war, and over 250,000 in French Army camps (from about 750,000 prisoners transferred to them from US and British camps). In the text it is claimed that at least 807,190 died in the US and French camps (that is, at least ten times the number killed in combat in North-West Europe from June 1941 to April 1945) of which somewhere between 167,000 and 314,241 died in French captivity ...”

“... message was disregarded. In fact, the ships were carrying troops for the invasion of Norway. F.H. Hinsley, who worked on naval traffic analysis and was alert to the slightest clue, describes how at first the Admiralty would not take seriously evaluations made by someone who had never been at sea or worked in Whitehall. Later they took him to sea (and to the ...”

“... with contacts in the Ministry of Information. All this comes from the latest volume of F.H. Hinsley’s British Intelligence in the Second World War, written in collaboration with C.A.G. Simkins. It is essentially a history of MI5, which was responsible for the internal security of Britain and parts of the Empire, and of the Secret Intelligence ...”

“... 1940-41 offensive, and Montgomery did not participate in ‘First’ Alamein in July 1942). Harry Hinsley’s British Intelligence and the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, Volume II, is another impersonal work. He has the strange notion that in order to simulate ‘perfect’ reality he must exclude any mention of individuals. Pas ...”

“... intercepts meant and to reconstruct the assumptions which governed German strategy, was Harry Hinsley. After the war, Hinsley returned to Cambridge as a don. Post-war Cambridge was dominated in the humanities, not so much by Leavis, as by Butterfield and Oakeshott, who had founded the Cambridge Journal. Through his ...”

“... account of what is known now about all kinds of intelligence and covert activities. Professor F.H. Hinsley and his colleagues are fulfilling this task meticulously and with clinical detachment in their official history of British Intelligence in the Second World War, but Mr Collier has meanwhile provided a useful synthesis for non-specialists. As one would ...”

“... diaries, Churchill’s own six volumes on the war, and the history of British intelligence by F.H. Hinsley. For evidence which has never seen the light of day before, Gilbert has drawn on the correspondence of the Churchill family, the papers and recollections of his staff, and stories sent in by people who responded to a request of his on Desert Island ...”

“... sections are better than others. Michael Howard (‘Churchill and the First World War’), F.H. Hinsley (... and the Use of Special Intelligence), R.V. Jones, the happy beam-hunter of 1940 and premier intelligencer thereafter (... and Science), Norman Rose (and Zionism) and Roy Jenkins (the Government of 1951-55) are predictably good. The uneven John Keegan ...”

“... Thanks to the official history of British Intelligence, which so far runs to four volumes by F.H. Hinsley and three collaborators, and now this volume by Michael Howard, the astonishing record is clear and long but also – strangely for a subject of such encrusted deviousness – entirely believable. With admirable skills of exposition and a truly awesome ...”

“... But to pose the options in this way created a wholly false antithesis, as critics like F.H. Hinsley pointed out, between profound causes and specific events. It was as though the whole issue turned on a choice between plan and no-plan, and as though Taylor was simply left with no-plan as his residual alternative. In fact he knew better. He wrote that ...”