THE SOE and British Culture

CFP (please share!): Our digital literary heritage is rapidly being lost, from 1990s hypertext sites to 2010s digital humanities projects. _A Field Guide to Modernisms_ seeks to spread awareness, document at-risk projects, and brainstorm solutions.

Abstracts by February 2:
www.shawnaross.com/cfp/.

Tradecraft: The Exhibition Join us at the Weston Library or online for a talk from the curators of the Weston Library’s latest exhibition, John Le Carré: Tradecraft

In person & online!

A talk about our newly opened exhibition 'John Le Carré: Tradecraft': visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/oct25/...
Co-curators Jessica Douthwaite & Federico Varese & the Bodleian's Head of Public Engagement will discuss JLC's archive & the development of this exciting exhibition

NEW on the blog: Russell Shanks's top 5 clunkiest SOE videogames: soeandbritishculture.webspace.durham.ac.uk/2025/10/09/5...

Book cover for 'Covert Action'

📚 Congratulations to @rorycormac.bsky.social on the publication of his new co-edited book 'Covert Action: National Approaches to Unacknowledged Intervention'

📖 Read more here🔗 tinyurl.com/3cdbynaa

ℹ️ Find out more about Rory and his research 🔗 nottingham.ac.uk/politics/people/rory.cormac

'Amateur, dangerous and bogus': SIS-SOE relations - THE SOE, COVERT ACTION, AND THE BRITISH CULTURAL IMAGINARY Guy Woodward explores social media posts by the outgoing head of SIS and considers the fractious wartime relations between the agency and SOE Posting on X in July this year Sir Richard Moore, head of ...

NEW on the blog: as MI6 chief Richard Moore retires, Guy Woodward on the troubled relations between MI6 and SOE: soeandbritishculture.webspace.durham.ac.uk/2025/09/30/a...

Anything missing?

Move over, Miss Marple.

Hooray, my copy finally arrived! It’s the first attempt to compare states’ approaches to what our US friends call covert action

My own personal conclusion is “covert action” is dumb and when talking about wider practice beyond US legal codes we should use “unacknowledged interference”

featuries @easports.bsky.social Battlefield V + Medal of Honor, @charlesgames.bsky.social Attentat 1942, @rebellion.com Sniper Elite: Resistance, and Pandemic Studios' The Saboteur

Top 5 SOE Videogames - THE SOE, COVERT ACTION, AND THE BRITISH CULTURAL IMAGINARY Russell Shanks chooses the best SOE-related games from the past 25 years Among the pantheon of Second World War videogames, special operations and covert action form a prominent subgenre. My research ...

NEW on the SOE and British Culture blog: Russell Shanks's Top 5 SOE Videogames: soeandbritishculture.webspace.durham.ac.uk/2025/09/08/t...

Join Dr David Morgan-Owen, British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, for Britain, Conflict & the Sea – a two-day conference at the National Maritime Museum (12–13 Sept), exploring how the practice, imagery, and idea of maritime conflict have shaped British history.

Find out more below ⬇️

🚨JOB Alert🚨 We are looking for another postdoctoral researcher to cover the history of veterans in the British colonies of Southern and/or East Africa in the interwar period. 24 month contract, deadline October 03. Please share widely. universityvacancies.com/maynooth-uni...

John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War: imagining the Special Operations Executive – Secret Intelligence Service rivalry as post-war counterfactual history Published in 1965, John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War was met with little of the acclaim given to its predecessor, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In this article, I propose an alternative re...

catch up with James's longer article on the SOE and The Looking Glass War here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

John le Carré and the ghostly legacy of the SOE - THE SOE, COVERT ACTION, AND THE BRITISH CULTURAL IMAGINARY James Smith on the impact of the SOE on post-war spy fiction As Guy Woodward’s last post suggested, a mooted collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and John le Carré on a film addressing treachery and ...

NEW on the SOE and British Culture blog - James Smith on ghostly legacies of the SOE in John le Carré's fiction: soeandbritishculture.webspace.durham.ac.uk/2025/08/28/j...

26 Sept 2025 Games Studies Symposium - Durham University

Our PhD candidate Russell Shanks is giving a lightning talk at 'Games Studies: Now, Next, Northeast', showcasing new scholarship on SOE and gaming culture. 26 September - register here: www.durham.ac.uk/research/ins...

Stanley Kubrick and the SOE - THE SOE, COVERT ACTION, AND THE BRITISH CULTURAL IMAGINARY Guy Woodward investigates an unrealised SOE film project Stanley Kubrick was one of the most influential film directors of the twentieth century, responsible for a string of films addressing modern wa...

NEW blog post from Guy Woodward on Stanley Kubrick's attempts to collaborate with John le Carré on a film about treachery and deception in the Special Operations Executive: soeandbritishculture.webspace.durham.ac.uk/2025/08/22/s...

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Peace In the week of VE Day, Matthew Sweet discusses what peace has meant since 1945.

congratulations to our project PhD candidate @ashpercival-borley.bsky.social - BBC New Generation Thinker 2025. Here's Ash on BBC Radio 4 discussing the changing contours of war and peace in the 80 years since the end of the Second World War: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Interested in #WWII? How about #SOE & Intelligence history?
Tickets are now available for historian Kate Reid-Smith’s free talk on Op Cleeves, an SOE operation in Southern Thailand in 1941.

www.awm.gov.au/author-talk-...

#WeHaveWays

From Army to academia - PhD student and army veteran @ashpercival-borley.bsky.social is one of this year's BBC New Generation Thinkers. Find out more how research has opened a whole new career path after the military 👉 www.durham.ac.uk/research/cur...

Usha Vance’s New Life in Trump’s Washington

‘Ms. Vance has just made her way through “Sword of Honor,” the trilogy of novels by Evelyn Waugh based on his experiences as an army officer in World War II, according to her account on the Goodreads website.’

👏 Best WW2 novel IMHO.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/u...

Special operations: a hidden chapter in the histories of facial surgery and human enhancement During the Second World War, Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret service established to encourage resistance and carry out sabotage, employed various techniques of enhancing the abi...

I just learned that the UK's Special Operations Executive used dental and plastic surgery to disguise some agents during World War II. Really cool article.

Book cover of "The Special Operations Executive in Malaya" by Rebecca Kenneison.

#histbookchat "The Special Operations Executive in Malaya" by Rebecca Kenneison just arrived from @bloomsburyhist.bsky.social‬. The myth busting and tie-in with my #SOE Operation Oblivion work & SOE Burma book by @drrichardduckett.bsky.social ‬ should appeal to @ww2tv.bsky.social for a #WW2TV show.

YouTube video by Catherine Warr Training as a WW2 Secret Agent | Chalke Valley History Festival

🚨🚨NEW VIDEO!🚨🚨

I got my hands on some radios, weapons and high explosives to learn what it took to become a secret agent during WWII - the Special Operations Executive Training Camp.

youtu.be/6C-KDTYkZlg

SOE project work in progress seminar - tomorrow 26 February at 1pm for anyone in Durham