Duff Cooper was a competent historian – for a while his two volume biography of Haig was considered a standard.
He only wrote one novel. Sometimes I read a book so you don’t have to. His novel, Operation Heartbreak, published in 1950, is a barely disguised account of Operation Mincemeat. As you can imagine it made a lot of people in Intelligence beyond furious. He dressed it up as a romance and that occupies the first ninety pages. His son, John Julius Norwich, couldn’t write a dull sentence if he tried. His father’s writing is plodding and devoid of any humour. I’m not surprised he never wrote another novel. The last fifteen pages are about Mincemeat and are good.
But we have reason to be grateful to Duff Cooper. The authorities, whoever they are, thought Operation Heartbreak would cause ill-informed speculation about Mincemeat and Ewen Montagu was given the task. As he was the midwife for Mincemeat there could have been no better choice and his account, The Man Who Never Was, came out in 1953. It went on to be a film in 1956. Ewen M had a small role interrogating his real self. He had never written a book before but he hit the bulls eye with The Man Who Never Was. He describes the conception, execution and aftermath of Mincemeat.
It is autobiographical and he tells his story meticulously. It is all fascinating and in particular after getting the crucial letters – one from General Nye to General Alexander, the other from Lord Mountbatten to Admiral Cunningham – which had to be convincing. EM and his team set about creating a background for Major William Martin, RM. A Lloyds overdraft, a fiancée, a bill for an engagement ring, letters from his father and the bank, stubs for two theatre tickets and so on. The team agonised over every detail. I seem to remember in the film German Intelligence checking everything, even if the theatre tickets had really been used. In fact they were by EM, his wife and two friends. But they did no such thing, never leaving their desks in Berlin. The greatest risk of failure came from the Spanish who seemed incapable of copying the letters to Berlin accurately. They kept getting dates wrong.
I recommend The Man Who Never Was but would not waste much time, if any, on Operation Heartbreak.
This review is half complete; covering the brilliant saga there is Ben Macintyre’s excellent book, Operation Mincemeat, followed by the correspondingly dreadful film, and, can you believe it, a musical. The film joins the ranks in these pages, alongside a chap on a Greek island with a mandolin, of books destroyed by its film. On the other hand there’s always the immortal Day of the Jackal, and the sadly all too mortal Frederick Forsyth