Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945.

Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945. Nicholas Rankin. Faber and Faber. [pounds sterling]25.00. xiv + 466 pages. ISBN 978-0-571 -22195-0. As the author writes, the British developed deception in both World Wars as 'a response to dangers represented by new military technologies ... this was especially true in WW2". He pays tribute to a national skill envied by lesser men. He divides his text into two parts: the first is concerned with the Great War while the bulk covers the Second World War. Mr Rankin defines his terms very widely: he includes writers such as Buchan and Shaw, T.E. Lawrence's guerrilla tactics and the evacuations of Suvla and Anzac as examples of 'deception' - all of which is arguable - and sometimes the text only retells the history of the two wars. He is mainly concerned with efforts to deceive the Germans through false information and black propaganda and includes the now famous story of the 'man who never was' and the work of Juan Pujol Garcia ('Garbo') as well as the work of men such as Solomon J. Soloman (the inventor of camouflage), Sefton Delmer and Dudley Clarke. Occasionally his historical background is weak: the 1908 annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Vienna was a change in status. Austria was not 'tearing it away from Greater Serbia' as it had been an Austrian territory since 1878. (T.B.)