Camp X: SOE School For Spies

by David Stafford

Camp X was the first secret agent training camp ever to be built in North America.

Established early in the Second World War by Britain’s Special Operations Executive on the Canadian shore of Lake Ontario, it trained dozens of Americans and Canadians in the arts of secret war including paramilitary skills, close combat, disguise, secret ciphers, propaganda, and undercover operations.

Many of the Camp’s graduates became secret agents in enemy-occupied Europe and Asia. Others were sent to South or Central America to counter Nazi espionage and subversion against the allied war effort. Still others worked at the Camp’s HYDRA radio station responsible for transmitting some of the most sensitive intelligence material to pass between secret services across the Atlantic.

Based on eyewitness accounts and secret files in London, Washington, and Ottawa, the cast of this real life spy adventure also includes Sir William Stephenson (‘Intrepid’), OSS chief ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. This edition includes a new preface by the author bringing the story up to date.

Praise for Camp SOE school for spies :

'True and fascinating… told in vivid detail… With the excitement of a first-rate thriller Camp X dramatically chronicles a key period in the genesis of the international spy game’ - Stars and Stripes

‘The course of study at Camp X reads like a James Bond training school’ - Indianapolis Star ‘Required reading for any potential 007’ - Sunday Mirror

David Stafford is an historian and former diplomat who has written extensively on espionage, intelligence, Churchill, and the Second World War. He is now an Honorary Fellow and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where he and his wife now live.

311 pages, Paperback

Published May 24, 2021

About the author

David Alexander Tetlow Stafford is projects director at Edinburgh University's Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars and Leverhulme Emeritus Professor in the University's School of History, Classics and Archaeology.
Stafford took his B.A. at Downing College, Cambridge in 1963. He then undertook postgraduate study at the University of London, taking an M.A. and finally his Ph.D. in history in 1968.

Beginning his career with government service, Stafford served in the British Diplomatic Service as a third secretary at the Foreign Office from 1967 to 1968, and then as second secretary in 1968. He then took up an appointment as research associate (1968–70) at the Centre of International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He then became assistant professor of history (1970–76) at Canada's University of Victoria in British Columbia. He was promoted to associate professor of history (1976–82) and finally professor of history (1982–84). He then became director of studies (1985–86) and executive director (1986–92) at the Canadian Institute of International Affairs in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. From 1992 to 2000 Stafford became a visiting professor at Edinburgh University's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, and then, from 2000, he became projects director at the Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars.

Stafford is particularly noted for his scholarly works concerning Winston Churchill and British intelligence, various aspects of the Second World War, and Twentieth Century intelligence and espionage with a focus on Britain. He now resides in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

He is a regular book reviewer, appearing in The Times (London), BBC History Magazine, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, the Times Herald Tribune (Paris), and Saturday Night and the Globe and Mail (Toronto).