Between Silk and Cyanide - Tapa dura

The Story of SOE’s code room and the Second World War memoir of the man who transformed code making and code breaking in the build up to D-Day.

Leo Marks has led an extraordinary life. His father owned the famous bookshop 84 Charing Cross Road and the young Leo’s first foray into the world of codes was when, aged 8, he broke the price code used by his father.
· A career, first as a master cryptographer and then as an award winning scriptwriter, followed. He wrote the classic Peeping Tom (starring Anna Massey) which has been classed by Alexander Walker as the most important film ever made in Britain.
· Leo Marks is also the man credited by Roosevelt as having shortened the war by at least three months – due to the astounding innovations he devised in signals intelligence – saving countless thousands of lives.
· Channel Four broadcast a feature-length documentary on Leo in the autumn of 1997 called A Very British Psycho. Part of the Arthouse series, the press attention was enormous. He is immensely well-connected and promotable.

Between Silk and Cyanide reveals for the first time the code operations of SOE during the war. Responsible for all secret British agents in enemy territory, the code department provided the only secure means of communication for these men and women working under the eyes of the Gestapo. Marks, horrified at the simplistic and insecure codes used in the early part of the war, re-invented the entire method of signals communication.
· This is an exciting story of high level espionage – Marks is involved in the communications between De Gaulle and the Free French, the destruction of the atomic weapon plant at Rjukan in Norway, the surveillance of Hitler’s long-range missile base at Pennemunde, the build up of the Secret Army prior to D-Day and the secret surrender negotiations between Mussolini and the British.
· His story is told in a light, witty style with many dry asides (very much in the tone of the best-selling To War with Whitaker). But it also gives a clear and fascinating insight into the day-to-day operations of the British war effort. It is a book which will inform and make you laugh all at once.

'Between Silk and Cyanide' is the witty, engrossing wartime story of Leo Marks, a cryptographer of genius who transformed code-making and code breaking for SOE from 1942 to 1945, and went on to write the script of the cult film, 'Peeping Tom'.