Within each chapter of SOE and The Resistance, obituaries of SOE agents have been selected to illustrate the work of the organisation within a particular sphere of operations. These are linked, illuminated and set in historical conext with a running narrative commentary by Michael Tillotson, the Times long standing military obituarist. The capitulation of France in June 1940 left Britain isolated of allies, other than the Commonwealthh countries and the valiant Poles who had escaped the dual violation of their country by Germany and Russia. The coast line of continental Europe lay under German control from the North sea to the Pyrenees. Little stood bertween Britain and disaster, when in 1940 Winston Churchill ordered SOE into immediate action. In his introdution, Tillotson explains how the SOE agents were recruited and trained but explains also the extreme complexity of the SOE relationship with the government, MI5 and MI6 and the resistance. This is a thrilling tale told not as dry as dust academic history but as flesh and blood.