4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Lewen Weldon was in Marseilles en-route home for his biannual leave. For the previous fourteen years, he had been mapping the deserts of Egypt. But the UK has just declared war on Germany and started what would become First World War.

He had a particular set of skills, including being a fluent Arabic speaker, that the intelligence services knew they could use and they had a very important role for him. He was to run a network of spies behind the Turkish lines dropping them by boat and interviewing locals who were sympathetic to the allies and their strategic aims.

The book was written from his diary of the time and it is almost like reading a report with embellishments. But it is those additions that bring it to life as a book. There are details about the mundane parts of the job and the terror of being bombed whilst in the harbour and torpedoed.

How the book came back into publication too has an interesting back story.  I am glad it has been brought back as I thought that it was a fascinating book. Weldon gives a great insight into the job of running agents in enemy territory. It is written in a clipped mater of fact style which is very detailed about who he met with and where, but he also manages to convey just how tense it was in the area when they were carrying out these operations, in particular at night. Well worth reading.

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