Terry Stiastny – författare

Meet the misfits and mavericks who waged psychological warfare against the NazisSeptember, 1939. While Britain hovered on the brink of the Second World War, a team of unlikely and ill-assorted characters assembled in their secret headquarters. They had left their civilian roles as politicians, journalists, novelists and spies, advertisers, artists and even forgers, to work for a covert government organisation. Their goals: to weaken enemy morale, sow confusion and encourage resistance. In the ‘hush-hush’ village of Aspley Guise near Woburn Abbey (8 miles from the codebreakers at Bletchley Park), they set to work.The once top-secret wartime efforts of the Political Warfare Executive were remarkable in their variety and inventiveness – from pornographic leaflet drops to rumour campaigns, underground publications and fake French and German radio shows. But to break Nazi morale, these men and women found themselves skirting the edges of their own morality. What do you lose when you deploy lies – even brilliant, believable lies – to achieve your ends?

Brought to you by Penguin.Meet the misfits and mavericks who waged psychological warfare against the NazisSeptember, 1939. While Britain hovered on the brink of the Second World War, a team of unlikely and ill-assorted characters assembled in their secret headquarters. They had left their civilian roles as politicians, journalists, novelists and spies, advertisers, artists and even forgers, to work for a covert government organisation. Their goals: to weaken enemy morale, sow confusion and encourage resistance. In the ‘hush-hush’ village of Aspley Guise near Woburn Abbey (8 miles from the codebreakers at Bletchley Park), they set to work.The once top-secret wartime efforts of the Political Warfare Executive were remarkable in their variety and inventiveness – from pornographic leaflet drops to rumour campaigns, underground publications and fake French and German radio shows. But to break Nazi morale, these men and women found themselves skirting the edges of their own morality. What do you lose when you deploy lies – even brilliant, believable lies – to achieve your ends?© Terry Stiastny 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Winner of the Paddy Power Political Novel of the Year1998: foreign minister Mark Lucas is in a dilemma. A disk containing the names of British informants to the Stasi has ended up in the hands of the government. Now he faces resistance from the diplomatic service who don''t want him to return it to the Germans.Alex Rutherford, a young man working for the intelligence services, wakes up one morning with a hangover and a frightening memory that his computer is lost and, with it, the only copy of that disk.When the disk is delivered to the newspaper where journalist Anna Travers works, she finds herself unravelling not just a mystery, but many people''s lives . . .Based on the true story of Stasi files of agents in the UK, Acts of Omission is suspenseful, exquisitely constructed and thought-provokingly topical - it is a novel about the leak of state secrets, the responsibility of newspapers, and the human cost of all of those.

''A skilful prose stylist and a connoisseur of telling details'' GuardianLawrence Leith has retreated from his once-successful career in TV to a small village in the south of France to mourn the end of his marriage and the loss of his job.When his old colleague Martin Elliott arrives for a summer holiday, surrounded by his lovely family and new, influential friends, he seems to have everything that Lawrence lacks. Martin is convinced that Lawrence should get back in the game, even if that involves returning to Africa, where it once nearly ended for both of them. As Martin''s carefully cultivated image begins to slip, Lawrence recovers his urge to find out the real story - one which will force him to choose between his friend and his principles.Masterfully constructed and universally topical, Conflicts of Interest is a novel about personal betrayal and political double-dealing, about the realities of being in the public eye and how the truth, no matter how hidden, will always out.