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'A gripping account of Britain's secret war in Italy... Stafford vividly describes these missions with striking detail and telling quotes.' - BBC History Magazine In May 1945 Italy was liberated from Nazism by the British Eighth and American Fifth Armies. By that time the Italian resistance movement had emerged as one of the strongest in Europe - crucially aided and abetted by the UK's Special Operations Executive. As what Winston Churchill graphically described as the 'red-hot rake of the battle-line' advanced bloodily up the Italian peninsula, clandestine cells in the cities and partisan bands in the countryside fought to free their country from enemy occupation and shape the politics of Italy's post-war future. SOE in Italy, known as No.1 Special Force, parachuted in dozens of missions to supply the underground with weapons and ammunition, food and supplies. In a remarkable twist it also secretly collaborated with its former enemy, the Italian military intelligence service, and with the Italian Navy, which used fast torpedo boats and rubber dinghies to land British agents on heavily defended beaches. Based on recently released official files, documents retrieved from other agencies, diaries, memoirs and personal interviews, Mission Accomplished provides the first-ever complete and authoritative account of Britain's secret war in Italy - the heroic exploits, the larger-than-life participants and the extraordinary, against-the-odds achievements. Praise for Mission Accomplished: 'An admirably lucid and carefully balanced account... official histories are rarely as absorbing as this' - Times Literary Supplement 'A page-turning history' - Independent 'The mission was something of which both Britons and Italians can be rightly proud and Stafford does it full justice' - Daily Express 'Although this is an official history commissioned by the Cabinet Office, it is written with a light to