Roderick Bailey
The Spy Who Loved Men
The Shooting Star: Denis Rake MC, A Clandestine Hero of the Second World War
By Geoffrey Elliott
Methuen 251pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
A few years ago, in the shelves of McNaughton’s bookshop in Edinburgh, I turned up a copy of They Fought Alone, a 1958 account of British agents’ exploits with the French Resistance. The author, Maurice Buckmaster, had been head of the French Section of Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Scribbled inside the cover, in red ink long faded to pink, is a page-length inscription by Denis Rake, one of the featured agents. ‘A mon cher ami Arthur’, Rake’s note begins. ‘You will find lots of things not as I told you.’
Outwardly a memoir, They Fought Alone is a book of its time, heavy with tales of dramatic derring-do and long bursts of imagined conversation. Dialogue aside, it is shot through with inaccuracies. Such is the way with many memoirs, of course, especially those of men once engaged in
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'McCarthy’s portrayal of a cosmos fashioned by God for killing and exploitation, in which angels, perhaps, are predators and paedophiles, is one that continues to haunt me.'
@holland_tom on reading Blood Meridian in the American west (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/devils-own-country
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/