Terry Stiastny's first non-fiction book coming soon

I'm really looking forward to hearing reading responses to Terry Stiasny's Believable Lies when it is published by Ebury on 12 June.

The amount of research that Terry has done for this book is phenomenal and groundbreaking. She went deep into the archives to discover what went on in the British propaganda machine during the Second World War. Although of course it wasn't a 'machine': it was highly dependent on the personalities and proclivities of a cast of maverick characters who often had very different ideas about what they should be doing, and who should be in charge. The political is always personal!

Robert Hutton (author of The Illusionist and Agent Jack) calls the book “a fascinating story of truth and deceit”, writing,

“The Allied effort to shift the balance of the war through propaganda is here revealed as a tale of eccentricity, bitter rivalries and moments of pure genius.”

But also very interesting is the discussion about whether propaganda should enhance the truth, or deceive. The danger of promoting falsehoods during war is that they might come back to bite you later. There is much of contemporary relevance in this fascinating book.