Henry Hemming

'A revelatory and wholly fascinating work of history. Superbly researched and written with gripping fluency, this lost secret of World War II espionage finally has its expert chronicler.' - WILLIAM BOYD'Gripping and intoxicating, it unfolds like the best screenplay.'- NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE'This is excellent, surprising and timely. Henry is a proper talent.' - DAN SNOW'This is a fascinating and gripping book, and deserves to be a big hit on both sides of the Atlantic.' - JOHN O'FARRELL'In Hemming's sure hands, America's uncertain progress towards direct engagement in the second world war becomes riveting history.' - SPECTATOR'A galloping story that Henry Hemming tells with clarity and aplomb.' - NEW STATESMANThe gripping story of a propaganda campaign like no other: the covert British operation to manipulate American public opinion and bring the US into the Second World War.When William Stephenson - "our man in New York" - arrived in the United States towards the end of June 1940 with instructions from the head of MI6 to 'organise' American public opinion, Britain was on the verge of defeat. Surveys showed that just 14% of the US population wanted to go to war against Nazi Germany. But soon that began to change...Those campaigning against America's entry into the war, such as legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh, talked of a British-led plot to drag the US into the conflict. They feared that the British were somehow flooding the American media with 'fake news', infiltrating pressure groups, rigging opinion polls and meddling in US politics.These claims were shocking and wild: they were also true. That truth is revealed here for the first time by bestselling author Henry Hemming, using hitherto private and classified documents, including the diaries of his own grandparents, who were briefly part of Stephenson's extraordinary influence campaign that was later described in the Washington Post as 'arguably the most effective in history'. Stephenson - who saved the life of Hemming's father - was a flawed maverick, full of contradictions, but one whose work changed the course of the war, and whose story can now be told in full.

Four Shots in the Night is the story of the killing of Frank Hegarty, an IRA member turned British informant.  The search for justice for Hegarty's death—his body found in broad daylight, with tape over his eyes, an undisguised hit—would deliver more than the truth. It exposed Hegarty's status as an informant and led to protests, campaigns, far-reaching changes to British law, a historic ruling from a senior judicial body, a ground-breaking police investigation, and bitter condemnation from a US Congressional commission. And there have been persistent rumors that one of the country’s most senior politicians, the Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness, might have been personally involved in this particular murder. Relying on archival research, interviews, and the findings of a new complete police investigation, Four Shots in the Night tells a riveting story not just of Hegarty's death but of his role in the decades-long conflict that defined him--the Troubles. How did the Troubles really come to an end? Was it a feat of diplomatic negotiation, as we've been told--or did spies play the decisive role? And how far can, or should, a spy go, for the good of his country?