Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Tim Spicer

This story is not just another history of the SAS. It is the only biography of an extraordinary man, ‘whose courage made it easier for us to be brave’. Brian Franks, tough, capable and charismatic and loved by officers and soldiers alike, is largely unknown outside the Special Operations world but has been credited by David Stirling as being one of the five founding fathers of the SAS. A dashing bon viveur, he could move freely in all sections of society, from members of the royal family to junior soldiers. He was close friends with a wide range of characters. David Niven, Ian Fleming, Evelyn Waugh, and Winston Churchill as well as his military comrades – the Stirling Brothers, Paddy Mayne, Roy Farran and Bob Laycock. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the Cold War, Franks’ life was one of bravery, intrigue and glamour.As for the title of this book, in 1918 Franks wrote a letter to his parents from his prep school. The letter, written on lined, dusty pink paper, began, ‘Dear Mummy and Daddy, I hope you are well. Please send me an axe and four balloons…’. The reason for this strange request was never explained, but if the rest of Franks’ life is anything to go by, the possibilities are endless.

An Axe and Four Balloons

The Biography of Brian Franks DSO MC, the Man Who Saved The SAS

Between 1942 and 1944 a very small, very secret, very successful clandestine unit of the Royal Navy, operated between Dartmouth in Devon, and the Brittany Coast in France. It was a crossing of about 100 miles, every yard of it dangerous. The unit was called the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla: crewed by 125 officers and men, it became the most highly decorated Royal Naval unit of the Second World War. 
The 15th MGBF was an extraordinary group of men thrown together in the most secret of adventures. Very few were regular Royal Naval officers: instead the unit was made up of mostly Royal Naval Volunteer Officers and 'duration only' sailors. Their home was a converted paddle steamer and luxury yacht, but their work could not have been more serious. 
 
Their mission was to ferry agents of SIS and SOE to pinpoint landing sites on the Brittany coast in Occupied France. Once they had landed their agents, together with stores for the Resistance, they picked up evaders, escaped POWs who had had the good fortune to be collected by escape lines run by M19, as well as returning SIS and SOE agents. 
 
It is a story that is inextricably entwined with that of the many agents they were responsible for - Pierre Hentic, Yves Le Tac, Virginia Hall, Albert Hué, Jeannie Rousseau, Suzanne Warengham, François Mitterrand and Mathilde Carré, as well as many others. Without the Flotilla, such intelligence gathering networks as Jade Fitzroy and Alliance would never have developed, and SOE's VAR Line and MI9's Shelburne Escape Line would never have been realised. 
 
Drawing on a huge amount of research on both sides of the Channel, including private archives of many of the families involved, A Dangerous Enterprise brings the story of this most clandestine of operations brilliantly to life.

A Dangerous Enterprise

Secret War at Sea

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