How do you set about training a secret agent? What kind of people were recruited and trained to kill and sabotage so they could be dropped into Nazi occupied territory in World War Two? And what happened to them after their active service was over? The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a clandestine Allied organisation set up by Winston Churchill in the Second World War to carry out sabotage and encourage resistance behind enemy lines in Europe, the Balkans and the Far East. Warfare of this type was unconventional, solitary and dangerous. By the end of the war, the SOE had recruited and trained more than 9,000 operatives - men and women of multiple nationalities - who were expected to endure, for prolonged periods, conditions of extreme physical and psychological difficulty and threat, where the consequences of failure could be catastrophic.