Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

'This was a secret war whose battles were lost or won unknown to the public . . . No such warfare had ever been waged by mortal men' Winston ChurchillShortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, a country house called The Firs in Buckinghamshire was requisitioned by the War Office. Sentries were posted at the entrance gates and barbed wire was strung around the perimeter fence. To local villagers, it looked like a prison camp. But the truth was far more sinister. This rambling Edwardian mansion had become home to an eccentric band of scientists, inventors and blue-stockings. Their task was to build devastating new weaponry that could be used against the Nazis. Led by the gung-ho Millis Jefferis, the men and women who worked at Churchill's Toyshop, as it became known, devised many of the key weapons of the Second World War. Their prototype limpet mine made possible the Cockleshell Raid on Bordeaux harbour. Churchill said that this one raid alone shortened the war by six months. N