Bernard O Connor: 10 books

Twenty Christmas ghost stories from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age. Wimbourne Books presents the second in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 2 in the series spans the years 1836 to 1899, contains...

Over sixty female agents were sent out by Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. These women - as well as others from clandestine Allied organisations - were flown out and parachuted or landed into occupied Europe on vital and highly dangerous missions. Their missions...

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Churchill and Stalin secretly agreed that Britain would infiltrate Soviet agents into occupied Western Europe. Liaison began between the NKVD and the SOE, each country's secret service. Transported in convoys across the Arctic Ocean and...

Home-grown terrorists equipped by a foreign power are not a new phenomenon. During the Second World War, Hitler’s Germany made sustained efforts to inflict a terror campaign on the streets of Britain through the use of secret agents and agents provocateurs. The aim was to blow up military, industrial,...

Designed by illusionist Jasper Maskelyne, RAF Tempsford was constructed to give overflying enemy aircraft the impression it was disused. Nothing could be further from the truth - just after dusk on moonlit nights either side of the full moon, planes from the 138 and 161 Squadrons would take off on...

In September 2010 the body of Eileen Nearne was found in a flat in Torquay. With no known friends or relatives, a council burial was arranged. A police search of her belongings found wartime French currency and wartime medals. Further investigation revealed that she was one of 40 women sent into France...

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Guy Burgess, an officer in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, convinced his superiors that a special school be opened to teach sabotage. Although his suggestion that it be called ‘Guy Fawkes’ School’ was turned down, Brickendonbury Manor,...

Very Special Agent Fifi was described as ‘one of the most expert liars in the world’. Employed by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Churchill’s wartime spook organisation, her job was to entrap trainee agents and test their mettle in the field. Kept secret for seventy-five years, her existence...

Between 1942 and 1944 at least 36 French women were recruited by British, French, Soviet and American intelligence agencies, trained as organisers, wireless operators, couriers and saboteurs and infiltrated into France by boat or plane from Britain and Algeria to help the French Resistance in their...

Over 16,000 pigeons were dropped into occupied Europe during WW2. Some were used by secret agents to send messages back to headquarters. Others were dropped by parachute into France, Belgium, Holland and Denmark in the hope that people would complete the attached questionnaire and provided military,...