In spite of these caveats, Garbo and his deeply eccentric colleagues undoubtedly saved countless lives.

Writers about espionage (Macintyre included) feel a natural affinity for keyboard warriors who spin colourful yarns that command assent, and tend to overegg their tasty pudding. They argue that, with Allied air superiority, the Eastern Front crumbling and the German officer elite in near-open revolt against Hitler, the D-Day forces would have prevailed without the rich diet of disinformation fed to Berlin by the agents. Some historians remain sceptical about the value of Second World War deception. From 1942, every 'German' source in Britain worked for the Allies, with the bizarre multi-national band of Double Cross agents under the management of the XX Committee and its dry, cricket-fanatic chief John Masterman.

It was designed to deceive the Germans about every aspect of the preparations for D-Day. Together with his double-agent colleagues, some of whose stories Ben Macintyre weaves into the latest of his enjoyable and engrossing books about wartime subterfuge and deception, Garbo fashioned a 'limitless, multi-character, ever-expanding novel'. Between 19, while living in a nondescript semi in Hendon with a disgruntled wife and a dull cover job at the BBC, Pujol – 'Agent Garbo' to his real controllers at MI5 – contributed several decisive chapters to perhaps the most spectacularly effective work of fiction in modern history. This literary destiny seems more than apt. After the Second World War, a Catalan former chicken-farmer named Juan Pujol retired to Venezuela, where he taught Spanish to Shell staff and ran a bookshop.

Double cross ben macintyre review