Ben Macintyre > Quotes

“Eccentricity is one of those English traits that look like frailty but mask a concealed strength; individuality disguised as oddity.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“What is the use of living if you cannot eat cheese and pickles?”
― Ben MacIntyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

“The policemen agreed they were living with a most peculiar fellow. One moment he was reading classical literature in the original French and quoting Tennyson, and the next he would be discussing the best way to blow up a train.”
― Ben MacIntyre, Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

“It is perfectly possible for two people to listen to the same words and hear entirely different things.”
― Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

“Lenin is often credited with coining the term “useful idiot,” poleznyi durak in Russian, meaning one who can be used to spread propaganda without being aware of it or subscribing”
― Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

“War is too messy to produce easy heroes and villains; there are always brave people on the wrong side, and evil men among the victors, and a mass of perfectly ordinary people struggling to survive and understand in between. Away from the battlefields, war forces individuals to make impossible choices in circumstances they did not create, and could never have expected. Most accommodate, some collaborate, and a very few find an internal compass they never knew they had, pointing to the right path.”
― Ben Macintyre, Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

“The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.”
― Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

“Sam Brewer enjoyed discussing Middle Eastern politics with Philby; Philby enjoyed sleeping with his wife.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“The word most consistently used to describe Kim Philby was "charm", that intoxicating, beguiling and occasionally lethal English quality.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Well you stick the dynamite in the keyhole and you don't damage the safe, only sometimes you put a little too much in and blow the safe door up, but other times you're lucky and the safe just comes open.
Thus the scion of a great banking dynasty learned how to rob a bank.”
― Ben MacIntyre, Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

“In a brilliant lecture written in 1944, C. S. Lewis described the fatal British obsession with the ‘inner ring’, the belief that somewhere, just beyond reach, is an exclusive group holding real power and influence, which a certain sort of Englishman constantly aspires to find and join.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Paranoia is born of propaganda, ignorance, secrecy and fear.”
― Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

“To overcome frailty is one definition of courage; to acknowledge it with honesty is another.”
― Ben Macintyre, Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War

“The trickiest aspect of lying is maintaining the lie. Telling an untruth is easy, but continuing and reinforcing a lie is far harder. The natural human tendency is to deploy another lie to bolster the initial mendacity. Deceptions—in the war room, boardroom, and bedroom—usually unravel because the deceiver lets down his guard and makes the simple mistake of telling, or revealing, the truth.”
― Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

“One night, around the campfire after a dinner of bully-beef stew, someone opened an extra bottle of rum. ‘As it grew
darker, the men began to sing, at first slightly self-conscious and shy, but picking up confidence as the song spread.’
Their songs were not the martial chants of warriors, but the schmaltzy romantic popular tunes of the time: ‘I’ll Never
Smile Again’, ‘My Melancholy Baby’, ‘I’m Dancing with Tears in My Eyes’. The bigger and burlier the singer, Pleydell
noted, the more passionate and heartfelt the singing. Now the French contingent struck up, with a warbling rendition
of ‘Madeleine’, the bittersweet song of a man whose lilacs for his lover have been left to wilt in the rain. Then it was
the turn of the German prisoners who, after some debate, belted out ‘Lili Marleen’, the unofficial anthem of the Afrika
Korps, complete with harmonies: ‘Vor der Kaserne / Vor dem grossen Tor / Stand eine Laterne / Und steht sie noch
davor …’ (Usually rendered in English as: Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate, darling I remember, how you
used to wait.) As the last verse died away, the audience broke into loud whistles and applause.
To his own astonishment, Pleydell was profoundly moved. ‘There was something special about that night,’ he wrote
years later. ‘We had formed a small solitary island of voices; voices which faded and were caught up in the wilderness.
A little cluster of men singing in the desert. An expression of feeling that defied the vastness of its surroundings … a
strange body of men thrown together for a few days by the fortunes of war.’
The doctor from Lewisham had come in search of authenticity, and he had found it deep in the desert, among hard
soldiers singing sentimental songs to imaginary sweethearts in three languages.”
― Ben Macintyre, Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War

“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”
― Ben Macintyre, Forgotten Fatherland: The True Story of Nietzsche's Sister and Her Lost Aryan Colony

“Britain might be in the grip of rationing, but buying the materials for a homemade bomb was a piece of cake. (In fact, obtaining the ingredients for a decent cake would have been rather harder.)”
― Ben Macintyre, Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

“In a craven and hierarchical organization, the only thing more dangerous in revealing your own ignorance, is to draw attention to the stupidity of the boss.”
― Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

“The defining feature of this spy would be his falsity. He was a pure figment of imagination, a weapon in war far removed from the traditional battle of bombs and bullets.”
― Ben Macintyre

“Never run away,” Jock Lewes instructed them. “Because once you start running, you’ve stopped thinking.”
― Ben Macintyre, Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War

“Here, then, was a truly bizarre situation: Philby was telling Moscow the truth, but was disbelieved, and allowed to go on thinking he was believed; he was deceiving the British in order to aid the Soviets, who suspected a deception, and were in turn deceiving him.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“For the D-Day spies were, without question, one of the oddest military units ever assembled. They included a bisexual Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot, a mercurial Frenchwoman, a Serbian seducer, and a deeply eccentric Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming.”
― Ben Macintyre, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies

“And so, as the bombs fell around him, this heroic British undertaker sat in his own grave, wearing his swimming trunks and a helmet, drinking a nice up of tea.”
― Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

“In launching Operation RYAN, Andropov broke the first rule of intelligence: never ask for confirmation of something you already believe. Hitler had been certain that the D-day invasion force would land at Calais, so that is what his spies (with help from Allied double agents) told him, ensuring the success of the Normandy landings. Tony Blair and George W. Bush were convinced that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that is what their intelligence services duly concluded. Yuri Andropov, pedantic and autocratic, was utterly convinced that his KGB minions would find evidence of a looming nuclear assault. So that is what they did.”
― Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

“One of the hazards of having a good idea is that intelligent people tend to realize it is a good idea and seek to play a part.”
― Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

“Secrets are the currency of intelligence work, and among professional spies a little calculated indiscretion raises the exchange rate.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

“Like all truly selfish people, Kliemann believed the minutiae of his life must be fascinating to all.”
― Ben Macintyre, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies

“The greatest writers of spy fiction have, in almost every case, worked in intelligence before turning to writing. W. Somerset Maugham, John Buchan, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John le Carré: all had experienced the world of espionage firsthand. For the task of the spy is not so very different from that of the novelist: to create an imaginary, credible world and then lure others into it by words and artifice.”
― Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

“Philby now went in for the kill. Elliott had tipped him off that he would be cleared by Macmillan, but mere exoneration was not enough: he needed Lipton to retract his allegations, publicly, humiliatingly, and quickly. After a telephone consultation with Elliott, he instructed his mother to inform all callers that he would be holding a press conference in Dora’s Drayton Gardens flat the next morning. When Philby opened the door a few minutes before 11:00 a.m. on November 8, he was greeted with gratifying proof of his new celebrity. The stairwell was packed with journalists from the world’s press. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Do come in.” Philby had prepared carefully. Freshly shaved and neatly barbered, he wore a well-cut pinstriped suit, a sober and authoritative tie, and his most charming smile. The journalists trooped into his mother’s sitting room, where they packed themselves around the walls. Camera flashes popped. In a conspicuous (and calculated) act of old-world gallantry, Philby asked a journalist sitting in an armchair if he would mind giving up his seat to a lady journalist forced to stand in the doorway. The man leaped to his feet. The television cameras rolled. What followed was a dramatic tour de force, a display of cool public dishonesty that few politicians or lawyers could match. There was no trace of a stammer, no hint of nerves or embarrassment. Philby looked the world in the eye with a steady gaze and lied his head off. Footage of Philby’s famous press conference is still used as a training tool by MI6, a master class in mendacity.”
― Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal