Book Review: Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre

Upon finishing Agent Zigzag by the same author a month ago, I started right away on Operation Mincemeat. I usually take less than a week to finish a paperback of 600 pages. However, April and May have been particularly busy months, and the weekends were no different. There was always one obligation after another. I was surprised to note that I took one month to finish Agent Zigzag and another month to finish Operation Mincemeat. At the rate I'm reading, it's going to take me more than one lifetime to finish all the books I have!

Operation Mincemeat was the codename of a very bizarre deception carried out by the British Intelligence to fool the Nazis. One of the person involved in the deception was Ian Fleming who was in Room 35 of the Admiralty, the nerve center of British naval intelligence. He later went on to write the James Bond spy novels.

And his colleague, Charles Fraser-Smith, was the inventor who provided Ian Fleming with equipment for his more outlandish plans. Needless to say, Charles Fraser-Smith was responsible for the character 'Q' in the James Bond novels while 'M' was based on Admiral John Godfrey.

The deception involved getting a corpse with no family and dressing it up as an officer and floating it off to the Spanish shores with planted intelligence documents to fool the Germans about the Allieds' invasion plans. I particularly enjoyed the first half of the book. Stephen King couldn't have been more macabre. 

Bentley Purchase came up with a solution. "I've got it," said the coroner. "We'll get an electric fire and thaw out the feet only. As soon as the boots are on we'll pop him back in the refrigerator again and refreeze him. 

The mouth of the corpse has fallen open. The skin around the nose has sunk, and the upper part of the face appears discoloured. The fingers of the left hand are bent, as if clawing in pain.

"....a person was formally pronounced dead without ever having been alive."

I don't normally quote paragraphs from the books I read, but those passages just stuck in my mind. Read together with Agent Zigzag and The Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva, one has a better understanding and appreciation of how a war could be won even before it actually began. History lesson has never been so interesting, dead bodies do tell tales. And now I'm going to start on a fiction that has nothing to do with war....time to take a break from history. Should I read The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson or Snow by Orhan Pamuk, or......

Where to Stay in Cameron Highlands

[Updated - a newer hotel, Avillion, was added in]

One of my favourite local holiday destination is Cameron Highlands. I've been to Cameron Highlands so many times that I could be a tour guide for Cameron Highlands if I had wanted to. And with each trip, comes a post or two in this blog.

Looking back on all the different posts on Cameron Highlands, with many of them covering more or less the same hotels and the same activities - I'm a creature of habit and tend to stay at hotels which I'm familiar with - I've decided to amalgamate all the posts into two posts, where to stay and what to do.

Most people choose to stay at either Tanah Rata, the lower ground near the town centre, or Brinchang on the higher ground. Some may choose to stay at Ringlet if a golf course is what they're after. This post will cover four hotels, two at Brinchang and  two at Tanah Rata. 

Brinchang is sometimes 2°C cooler than Tanah Rata. It's also closer to the farms where you could pick (read: harvest) your own strawberries and vegetables. There are quite a few restaurants and cafes at Brinchang but you'll have to drive. Or, you can choose to eat at the hotels.

Tanah Rata is more convenient in that the cafes and restaurants are within walking distance of the hotels. It's also closer to Robinson Falls, where a number of jungle trails begin.

That said, Brinchang has its merits. There are strawberry farms, cherry tomato farms and other fruit and vegetable farms where you pick the crop yourself and you'll charged by the weight of what you had harvested.

There are two hotels that are my personal favourite in Brinchang. Copthorne, for its proximity to the street market where a large selection of fresh vegetables and fruits are sold. 

And Casa dela Rosa for its reminiscence to The Outlook Hotel in Stephen King's Shining. 

The corridor - do you hear "Wendy, I'm home!" or, "Knock, Knock, who's there? Here's Johnny!". Too bad hubby opened the door that led to the gardens just as I snapped the picture. The overall impression was lost a bit.

The room is rather sparsely decorated, not like what you would expect from a hotel, but it has a nice garden for guests to lounge around in.

The garden

The room

At Tanah Rata, my preferred accommodation is Century Pines Resort and Avillion. Century Pines is decades older than Avillion, but it has a charming garden which Avillion does not have.

This entrance is at the old wing. The new wing is not visible from the entrance.

View from the entrance

The rooms at the new wing

It is situated off the main road, so there is peace and quiet. Rows of shops and cafes are just  five to ten minutes' walk from Century Pines Resort. There're western food, fast food, South Indian food, Chinese food and fusion food.

Avillion, on the other hand, is located above a shopping complex. While it lacked a charming garden, it made up for with spacious rooms and an absolutely delectable complimentary breakfast buffet spread. My only gripe about Avillion is that I had to walk through the shopping complex from the car park to the hotel.

The room

The restaurant where the complimentary breakfast buffet spread was 

A hotel staff making an omelette for me - it's made fresh to order

Cafes and restaurants are all within walking distance. I would recommend staying at Tanah Rata if food convenience is a priority and you don't drive or didn't rent a car. The interstate bus terminal is located at Tanah Rata, across The Lord's Cafe, though I'm not sure if it's still opened now. The last time we were there, it was closed. Perhaps there was a church event that day.

Related posts:

Cameron Highlands Apples

Things To Do In Cameron Highlands

Resources:

Cameron Highlands Travel Guide

Cameron Highlands Apples

My first thought when I walked into a farm at Brinchang, Cameron Highlands and saw those plants was "What are these? Eggplants??" I wasn't alone in thinking that. A woman very authoritatively told her husband and kids that those were definitely eggplants. However, I wasn't as one hundred percent sure as she was. And hubby was certain those were not eggplants. So I went and asked one of the farmhands. He said those were apples. Apples?? Yes, Cameron Highlands' very own apples. Are they sour or sweet? Sweet. They taste like honeydew. Ohhh.....

The farmhand said all the ripe ones had been plucked. Being someone who love to try new things, I didn't want to go home without getting some. After badgering him, the farmhand said if I saw any that was yellow with red stripes, I could pluck those. But I'd have to keep them in room temperature for about two days for them to completely ripen, otherwise they won't taste good.

Ready to be plucked, and should ripen in two days

We only managed to find six apples that could be plucked. I guess there must have been a lot of tourists that visited during the May 1st holiday, as this is not the peak season. 

Today, three of the "apples" ripened and they exuded a rich honeydew smell. After chilling them in the fridge for a few hours, we sank our teeth into them. And....they were wonderful. Very juicy, juicier than regular honeydew, and sweet, those apples taste exactly like honeydew. The skin was a little funny, though. Felt like plastic. I couldn't peel them with a peeler, but after I had cut them, I could peel it off by pulling at the edge and dragging it off in one neat tug. A hybrid??

The "apples" were very juicy and sweet

Related posts:

Where To Stay in Cameron Highlands

Things To Do In Cameron Highlands

Resources:

Cameron Highlands Travel Guide

Book Review: Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre

A friend who read a review that I had written on The Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva suggested that since I enjoyed reading about British double-cross espionage during World War II I might like Agent Zigzag, a true account of love, espionage and betrayal . And she was right. 

While I had learned a fair bit about how the British concocted a very daring and remarkable deception plan to deceive the Nazis, Agent Zigzag completed my 'education' and I knew all the spy masters by name now, if not their complete personality, on both the British and German sides. Well, almost, anyway. There is one more deception, a very famous dead body operation called Operation Mincemeat, which I will write a review on when I'm finished with it.

Eddie Chapman was the most unlikely hero I had ever come across. He began his life as a criminal and was a member of the Jelly Gang who used chewing gum to stick the gelignite to the safes on their heists. 

And yet, he was also a gentle criminal. He abhorred the use of violence in his crimes. He was also a very charming young man, and made friends easily, both of the female and male gender. This was a man with two fiancées at the same time! 

He was serving a sentence in Jersey when the Nazis took control of the island. And so began a story that was more astounding than fiction. His British handlers codenamed him 'Zigzag' due to his erratic personality.

The book's account is taken from documents released by the British Secret Service MI5 to the UK National Archives in 2001 and is a must read for fans of espionage.