Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War 1941–1945 - Softcover

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Leo Marks is the son of the founder of the bookshop 84 Charing Cross Road and, after the war, became an extremely distinguished scriptwriter. His most famous film is the celebrated Peeping Tom – a terrifying thriller about a psychopathic killer obsessed with photographing the fear on the faces of the beautiful women he is about to murder. He is also the voice of Satan in Martin Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ .

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In 1942, with a black-market chicken under his arm, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went to war. He was twenty-two and a cryptographer of genius. In 'Between Silk and Cyanide, 'his critically acclaimed account of his time in SOE, Marks tells how he revolutionized the code-making techniques of the Allies, trained some of the most famous agents dropped into France including Violette Szabo and 'the White rabbit', and why he wrote haunting verse including his famous 'The Life I Have' poem. He reveals for the first time the disastrous dimensions of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland; how the Germans were fooled into thinking a Secret army was operating in the Fatherland itself; and how and why he broke General de Gaulle's secret code. Both thrilling and poignant, Marks's book is truly one of the last great Second World War memoirs.

"FASCINATING AND POIGNANT . . . IF YOU ONLY BUY ONE BOOK THIS YEAR, MAKE IT THIS."
PAUL ROUTLEDGE, 'Daily Mirror'

"Leo Marks never made it into the field himself. But his memoirs are as explosive as any sabotage conducted by those who did. Compulsive reading . . . Never once loosing contact with the personal courage and sufferings of the agents in the field, Mark's tale is by turns fiery, scabrous, infuriating and deeply tragic. The eyes mist over, the throat constricts; the heart thumps. I found 'Between Silk and Cyanide' impossible to put down."
DONALD CAMERON WATT, 'Independent'

'"Between silk and Cyanide' is a mesmerising account of World War II. Leo Marks, a brilliant cryptographer, is a masterful and passionate storyteller. I was immediately swept into his secret world of codes and 'undecipherables', trying at times to unravel the puzzle myself and I found it difficult to put the book down until the drama had come to an end."
MARTIN SCORSESE

"An irrepressibly witty and readable chronicle of a Candide in the madhouse of secret bureaucracy. As a comedy about the British at war, this book ranks with the fiction of Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh . . . , the fun and satire of 'Between Silk and Cyanide' sparkle against a dark background of anger and grief."
NEAL ASCHERSON, 'Observer'

"A brilliantly funny, savage, often desperately moving story."
ELIZABETH BUCHAN, 'The Times' Book of the Year

'Between Silk and Cyanide' is the witty, engrossing wartime story of Leo Marks, a cryptographer of genius who transformed code-making and code breaking for SOE from 1942 to 1945, and went on to write the script of the cult film, 'Peeping Tom'