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At the age of 8, Leo Marks discovered the great game of code-making and -breaking in his father's London bookshop, thanks to a first edition of Poe's The Gold-Bug. At 23, as World War II was being played out in earnest, he hoped to use his strengths for the Allies. But Marks's urgent, witty memoir, Between Silk and Cyanide, begins with his failure to get into British Intelligence's cryptographic department. As everyone else on his course heads off to Bletchley Park ("the promised land"), he is sent to what his sergeant terms "some potty outfit in Baker Street, an open house for misfits." In fact, the Special Operations Executive's mandate was, in Churchill's stirring phrase, to "Set Europe Ablaze," and Marks's was to monitor code security so that agents could could report back as safely as possible. When he arrived, the common wisdom was that it was easiest for men and women in the field to memorize and use well-known poems.
Unfortunately, since the Germans had equal access to the classics--"Reference books," Marks quips, "are jackboots when used by cryptographers"--Marks thought agents should write their own poems (or use his) instead, several of which are cheerily obscene. After all, no son or daughter of the Fatherland could ever know the rest of a verse that began "Is de Gaulle's prick / Twelve inches thick," and continued on in a similar, shall we say, vein. But Marks soon felt that original doggerel was just as dangerous, since even slight misspellings could render messages indecipherable and risk agents' lives. His first solution? WOKs (worked-out keys) printed on silk. An operative would use one key, send the message, and immediately tear off the strip. Marks had a hard time proving that swaths of silk would save his people from swallowing their "optional extra," a cyanide pill. His efforts were dead serious, but often landed him in comic terrain.
In one of the book's great set pieces, Marks visits Colonel Wills--surely the model for Ian Fleming's Q--in order to sort out the best ways to print his code keys. Before solving this minor problem (invisible ink!), Wills showed Marks several new projects--one of which involves an exotic array of dung, courtesy of the London Zoo. This gifted gadgetmeister planned to model life-sized reproductions of these droppings and pack them with explosives, personalized for all parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. "Once trodden on or driven over (hopefully by the enemy) the whole lot would go off with a series of explosions even more violent than the ones which had produced it," Marks explains.
Despite such larky sentences and sections, the author never loses sight of the importance of his vocation, and Between Silk and Cyanide is as elegiac as it is engaging. Marks knows when to cut the laugh track, particularly as his book becomes a despairing record of agents blown--lost to torture, prison, the camps, and execution. Readers will never forget the valor of Violette Szabo, Noor Inayat Kahn, and the White Rabbit himself, Flight Lieutenant Yeo-Thomas. Poem-cracking, as Marks again and again makes clear, was far more than a parlor game. --Kerry Fried
From Publishers Weekly
A well-paced war diary, Markss memoir traces the strategically vital creation of secure codes for Allied agents operating in Nazi-occupied territories. Marks was in his early 20s during the war, a civilian with military rank in Britains elite Special Operations Executive, a prodigy immersed in a pasty world of subterranean old men. Though Marks rarely ventured out of his basement office, his book builds a delicate tension as he describes working frantically to develop codes that the Nazis could neither crack nor imitate, as they did with the standard Allied poem code. Markss contributions to such historically significant events as the destruction of Norsk Hydro, the heavy water plant on which the Germans pinned their hopes for atomic weapons, and to the concealment of preparations for D-Day, are effectively balanced against such workaday concerns as finding quantities of silk onto which codes could be photographed. Although Markss account is more anecdotal than researched, his unique position as chief developer of Britains secure communications, along with an impishness that led him to break De Gaulles secret French code (off-limits to the non-French Allies) or rib his older compatriots (Davies nodded so hard he almost lost a jowl) give his book an authoritative and laconic punch. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
With dry British humor and all of the suspense of a spy thriller, screenwriter Marks tells of his remarkable career as a cryptologist with British Intelligence during World War II. As a codemaker and codebreaker for the super-secret Special Operations Executive (SOE) in London, Marks played a major role in the handling of covert operations throughout Occupied Europe. Marks was a wizard at cryptography but had little regard for authority or the lumbering wartime bureaucracy that often stymied his genius. On a whim, he broke General de Gaulles secret code, uncovering a startling and dangerous revelation. He invented a letter one-time pad code printed on silk that revolutionized encoded radio transmissions and ensured the operational security of SOEs agents. Most interesting, however, is how Marks discovered that the Dutch underground had been penetrated and compromised by the German Gestapo. Although the book is twice as long as it needs to be, this is the amazing true story of the little-known SOE intelligence section as seen by a man who lived the codemakers war. Recommended for all public and academic libraries. [The author is the son of the proprietor of Londons well-known 84 Charing Cross Road bookshop.Ed.]William D. Bushnell, USMC (ret.), Brunswick, M.-William D. Bushnell, USMC (ret.), Brunswick, MECopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, David Stafford
...[a] spellbinding real-life thriller.... Marks is a natural storyteller who brilliantly links the highly technical issue of codes and ciphers to the fates of individual agents.
The New York Times, Richard Bernstein
...an enthralling book, one full of an eccentric charm as well as fascinating, previously undisclosed details of the secret war waged in the occupied countries.
From Booklist
Along with epic speech making, Churchill's romantic imagination dreamed up the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to keep resistance bucked up until D-Day, and Marks was SOE's code chief at the wizened age of 22. His memoir is an extraordinary concoction of fact and jocundity. A count of 30 wisecracks per page is not too egregious an exaggeration of Marks' irreverence. The effect is hilarious, a bit maniacally so, but Marks was maniacally serious about code security. He explains cryptographic principles, showing why he disliked SOE's poem-based coding and campaigned to prove the Germans cracked it and "turned" the entire SOE operation in Holland. Other legendary operations in which Marks figured were the detection of the enemy's heavy water and ballistic rocket sites. These highlights mobilize Marks' propensity for twitting slower minds around him (with dollops of self-mockery) while reserving his admiration for the agents he helped send into enemy territories, a few forever. The active audience for espionage history will appreciate this memoir's unique blend of satire and seriousness Gilbert Taylor
From Kirkus Reviews
An exciting, witty, and compelling memoir of Great Britains cryptographic war against the Germans, by code-breaker (and - maker) Marks. Son of the proprietor of the famed bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road, the author pulled strings (taking advantage of the mistaken belief that he was related to a founder of the Marks and Spencer department store) to get a position as a cryptographer with the exclusive Special Operations Executive (SOE) branch of the British war effort. SOE was charged by Churchill with the mission of ``setting Europe ablaze''; it had agents in every field of the war, who all had to send information and receive instructions. When 22-year-old Marks arrived at SOE in 1942, agents memorized poem-codes, which they transmitted from the field back to London. These were prone to operator error and troubles in transmission. Marks revolutionized this by printing one-time only codes on water-soluble silk. As an operative in the London office, Marks had a prime opportunity to observe some facet of almost every major allied intelligence operation of the war, and there seems to be little he doesnt remember. Among the numerous famous Allied operations retold from Markss perspective (which almost always includes new nuggets of information), including the attacks on the German heavy-water plants, surveillance of the German fleet, and the continual struggles of the French Resistance. Marks paints a vivid portrait of London of that era, from the matrons who oversaw the young women in the coding office to the in-fighting of the various French factions, the privations of rationing, and his own attempts at getting ahead in the vast war machine. The hustle and bustle of London in the war years comes alive in this captivating story of keeping the Allies secret agents secret. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Martin Scorsese A mesmerizing account of World War II as fought on the home front in Great Britain by the ingenious codemakers whose work determined the life and death of the Allied agents in occupied Europe. Leo Marks, a brilliant cryptographer, is a masterful and passionate storyteller. I was immediately swept into his secret world of codes and "undecipherables," trying at times (without success) to unravel the puzzles myself, and found it difficult to put down the book until the drama had come to an end.
Book Description
In 1942, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to fight the war. He was twenty-two. Soon recognized as a cryptographer of genius, he became head of communications at the Special Operations Executive (SOE), where he revolutionized the codemaking techniques of the Allies and trained some of the most famous agents dropped into occupied Europe, including "the White Rabbit" and Violette Szabo. As a top codemaker, Marks had a unique perspective on one of the most fascinating and, until now, little-known aspects of the Second World War. Writing with the narrative flair and vivid characterization of his famous screenplays, Marks gives free rein to his keen sense of the absurd and his wry wit, resulting in a thrilling and poignant memoir that celebrates individual courage and endeavor, without losing sight of the human cost and horror of war.
Download Description
Special Operations Executive (SOE) was created in July 1940 with a mandate from Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze." Its main function was to infiltrate agents into enemy-occupied territory to perform acts of sabotage and form the resistance movements into secret armies. There have been many books and films about the breaking of codes -- but this is the first one about making them from a man who actually did.Leo Marks joined SOE in 1942 at the age of twenty-two. A cryptographer of genius, he had revolutionized code-making by the time he was twenty-three. In replacing the outdated and dangerous poem codes with an ingenious system of one-time codes printed on silk that could easily be destroyed, Marks was instrumental in both stymieing German counter-intelligence and saving hundreds of agent's lives. He discloses how and why he broke General de Gaulle's secret code; details the adventures of saboteurs who parachuted into Norway to destroy a heavy water plant; did surveillance on Hitler's long-range missile base at Pennemunde; and organized the secret armies of occupied Europe building up to D-Day.
About the Author
Leo Marks is renowned both as a cryptographer and as a screenwriter. His most famous work, Peeping Tom, a terrifying psychological thriller, is a cult classic of 1960s cinema. His father, Benjamin Marks, was the founder and owner of the legendary London bookshop 84 Charing Cross Road.
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