MARK URBAN

This work gives a compelling account of the officer who waged the intelligence battle against Napoleon's army, a forerunner to the great code-breakers of the 20th century. The French army, during the Peninsular War, used a code of unrivalled complexity - the 'Great Paris Cipher'. Major George Scovell used a network of Spanish guerillas to capture coded French messages, and then set to work decrypting them. The title suggests an emphasis on cryptography, but in fact, the story of George Scovell's decryption of Napoleon's 'Great Cypher' is only a small part of this magisterial work. The greater portion of Urban's book is a dynamic and fluid account of the Peninsular War, combining a solid and scrupulously accurate rendering of the plain military and tactical facts with the sort of three-dimensional modelling made possible by Scovell's own campaign diaries. Having been at the centre of the action for much of the war, Scovell was in a position to give revealing portraits of many of the protagonists, including the Iron Duke himself, and new light is thrown upon Wellington's character and command technique through Scovell's accounts and the way Urban incorporates them into the bigger picture. The breaking of the 'Great Cypher' itself proves to be crucial to the outcome of the war, and the detail of Scovell's laborious and inventive chipping away at its secrets makes a nice counterpoint throughout to the almost Homeric story of epic battles and great armies sweeping back and forth across the plains of Europe from Corunna to Waterloo. (Kirkus UK)