K.J. Charles's Reviews > Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945

The memoir of SOE's head of codes. Marks was 22, spoiled rotten, bursting with attitude, and a genius cryptographer. I'm not a zillion per cent sure I believe everything in this book (it's big on detailed recollections of conversations, poems, clothing, movements etc from fifty years ago) but in the round it's a remarkable read. The author's frequent expressions of humility and self doubt in no way disguise that he is massively full of himself, but then, he deserves to be. And what rings absolutely true is his feelings about being a 'backroom boy' while others went off to face appalling physical danger, the horror of watching them go, the greater horror of realising the backroom was failing them. Well written and fascinating.