Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive primary research to tell the story of MI14(d) and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time.

This is an astonishing story. Between 1941 and 1944, 16,000 brave pigeons were released in an arc from Northern France to Copenhagen as part of Operation 'Columba' – a secret British operation to return information from citizens living under Nazi occupation. The messages that were returned were written on small pieces of rice and placed in canisters tied to the birds' legs. Authentic voices from rural France, the Netherlands, and Belgium – which were sometimes funny, often tragic, and occasionally invaluable with details about German troop movements and modern weaponry, such as the development of the terrifying V-1 and V-2 rockets that terrorized London.

Who were the people providing this vital information? Many were not trained agents, nor, with few exceptions, did they have any experience in espionage. At the center of this book lies the ‘Leopold Vindictive’ network – a small group of Belgian villagers prepared to take enormous risks. They were led by an extraordinary priest, Joseph Raskin – a man connected to the royal family, whose information was so valuable that it was presented to Churchill, leading MI6 to parachute agents in to assist him.

A powerful and tragic story of wartime espionage, the book brings together the British and Belgian sides of the Leopold Vindictive story and reveals for the first time the broader story of this eccentric, argumentative group of spy leaders and their special operations during the war, as well as how bitter disputes in London endangered the lives of the secret agents. It is a book that is not primarily about the pigeons, but about the remarkable people living in occupied Europe, who faced the choice of how to respond to a call for help and decided to resist.

Pages: 336, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm