Intelligence: 'Wonderfully feisty and beguiling' WILLIAM BOYD

by Robert Newman

'Joyful, sad, smart and surprising' NICK HORNBY, bestselling author of High Fidelity and About a Boy

Was he about to recruit her into the secret service? She held her breath. Frogwoman, codebreaker, assassin, saboteur - whatever it was, she'd do it!

Oxford, 1938. Ida and Medora are two brilliant young philosophers at the heart of a group who gather in storied rooms to dance, drink and debate theories of right and wrong.

But as the world spins towards war, theoretical questions of life and death become all too real. While her friends are called up to do intelligence work, Ida, the irrepressible Texan outsider, seeks academic distraction. Then she stumbles across secret Nazi information that could radically change the direction of the war. Can she and Medora capture the attention of the spymasters and mandarins in London in time to save thousands of lives?

Seductive, witty and page-turning, Intelligence is the unputdownable new novel from one of the UK's best-loved writers and comedians.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

287 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 5, 2026

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Robert ("Rob") Newman (born 7 July 1964) is a British stand-up comedian, author and political activist. In 1993 Newman and his then comedy partner David Baddiel became the first comedians to play and sell out the 12,000-seat Wembley Arena in London. He was born to a Greek Cypriot father and British mother.

Newman's first speaking appearance was with Third World First (now known as People and Planet), the student political organisation. In addition to comedy and writing, he has also worked as a paperboy in Whitwell, Hertfordshire, farmhand, warehouse-man, house-painter, teacher, mail sorter, social worker, mover, and broadcaster.

Reviews

[Kel Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to experience this book.
I listened to the audio book, the narration was easy to listen to a created great characters.
The story is set around the start of WW2 and centres on some young philosophers who go on to work in intelligence.
A great story with some wonderful historical references, friendship, love, adventure and daring.
Easy to listen to but not as easy to put down.

[Jason Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intelligence
by Robert Newman

Well, here’s a thing: philosophy at war.
Against the Hun, how fares the old Oxonian?
What use the abstract problems they explore
In Bodleian, All Souls and old Sheldonian?
Intelligence, it seems, is not identical
To sophistry and glibness Ciceronian,
For moral sense extends its feeling tentacle
To eyes in skies and hand grenades chthonian.

Every page wears telling detail lightly:
Reconnaissance of minds and foreign fields;
Dons dispatched from dens, who bear it brightly,
Alert to what their urgent digging yields:
Joy and sorrow, death to Tom and Jerry,
The tangled needs of Ida, Glyn and Merry.

[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Intelligence’ follows Oxford philosophers from theoretical debate to being confronted by those same dilemmas through the course of WWII.

The cast of characters was easily distinguishable due to the narrator and there were parts of the narrative that were amusing and engaging. Largely, I found the plot quite thin and I didn’t find myself emotionally invested in the characters which ultimately impacted the landing of the ending for me.


via NetGalley

[Verity Halliday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intelligence is about young Oxford academics who are called up to do intelligence work at the beginning of World War II. I liked the characters, but didn't feel as immersed in the feeling of war that I hoped. On more than one occasion, characters looked out of a window into the night while working, which made me wonder why they didn't have blackout enforced in government buildings.

Nevertheless, an interesting read, with good narration in the audiobook.