Volume 23, Number 2 · February 19, 1976
The Ultra Ultra Secret
By Hugh Trevor-Roper
Bodyguard of Lies
by Anthony Cave Brown
Harper & Row, 947 pp., $15.95
Mr. Cave Brown is a very courageous man. He undertook the difficult task of writing a history of Allied deception during the Second World War at a time when the two essential sources for such a study were officially concealed. These two sources were, first, all material directly relating to deception, and, secondly, all material relating to cryptography and its results. In the course of his research he was able to penetrate these barriers indirectly. Then, while he was still at work, the ban was partially lifted and partially broken. F.W. Winterbotham was allowed to publish The Ultra Secret, or at least that part of it—the most jealously protected of all—which concerned the breaking by British intelligence of the German cipher machine called 'Enigma'; and Sir John Masterman, undeterred by the bumble of bureaucracy, published his account of the Double-Cross System. The delays caused by the ban, and the labor which it has entailed, are obviously great, and we must respect the energy and industry which have enabled Mr. Cave Brown to produce, in the end, this enormous book.
Review, 4232 words
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