The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare:How Churchill's Secret WarriorsSet Europe Ablaze andGave Birth to Modern Black Opsby (eventually) Damien LewisQuercus, 2015The few details of his latest book that Damien Lewis decided not to include in the book's 600-word-long subtitle are actually fascinating; The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare chronicles – in far greater detail than any previous account – the genesis and exploits of the Special Operations Executive, a small group of reavers and sociopaths rounded up at the secret urging of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for the express purpose of wreaking very un-British bloody havoc on Nazi operations from Holland to West Africa. Churchill intended the SOE to “set ablaze enemy-held Europe,” and he and a small number of his ministers created a separate institutional identity for this semi-private band of killers:

The SOE wasn't part of the wider military. It was formed under the Ministry of Economic Warfare, an it was more akin to a separate branch of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). So clandestine was its existence that it operated under a cover name – the innocuous sounding 'Inter-Service Research Bureau.' Those who began working at its grey, nondescript 64 Baker Street, London, headquarters referred to the SOE as variously 'The Firm,' 'The Org' or, perhaps most suitably, 'The Racket.'

“Officially,” Lewis writes with typical – and often infectious – hyperventilation, “the SOE didn't exist, and neither did its agents nor its missions, which meant that anything was possible.”The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare chronicles the adventures of these men, whose mission, broadly stated, was “to carry out operations seen as being too politically explosive, illegal or unconscionable as to be embraced by the wider British establishment.” SOE members were taught to fight dirty, quiet, and lethal; they were armed with a specially-designed style of knife; they were some of the first British operatives 'licensed to kill'; and of course they were not only expendable but intensely deniable. As Lewis notes, it's a little startling – or maybe a little disturbing – how many volunteers Churchill got.Lewis's book operates on much the same principles as the SOE: it travels lean, it strikes at vital points with little wasted effort, and it's extremely effective. And it feels a bit illicit: our author never reports dialogue when he can reconstruct it, and he leaves no derring-do to the reader's imagination. The narrative abounds with tense scenes in which our heroes are under cover impersonating Nazi soldiers, exciting scenes in which our heroes are defying not only the Third Reich but the elements, and highly-charged scenes in which our heroes are escaping from peril by the thinnest of margins – and Lewis relates all of it as thought he were scripting an updated Len Deighton thriller:

As its cargo of burning aviation fuel sucked in oxygen and boiled and flared, Nicholson and Greaves escaped into the darkness. The heat of the explosions was strong on their backs, the two men sprinting for the cover of the vineyard and comparative safety. Searchlights swept the terrain to either side of them. Several times they were forced to hit the deck, fearing the bullets they were sure would slam into their backs. But finally they reached the first rank of the ancient grapevines, and slipped into its cover.

The property-scouts of Hollywood now loiter around the red light districts of the Republic of Letters like vice cops on the make, so it's virtually impossible that The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare hasn't already come to some studio's attention as a kind of real-life Inglourious Basterds. But Lewis tells the story of the SOE and its crack-brained killers with more compassion – not to mention more accuracy – than any cable mini-series would want to do; no WWII library should be missing this book.