A remarkable wartime memoir wherein the celebrated stage conjurer reveals how illusion became weaponry in the North African desert. This rare first edition, bearing its distinctive salmon and blue dust wrapper, chronicles Maskelyne's transformation from Wandsworth magician to military deceiver.
Within these pages, illustrated with numerous photographs declassified from the secret lists, one discovers accounts of impossible deceptions: the vanishing of Alexandria harbour, phantom armies multiplied across the Western Desert, dummy battleships drawing Luftwaffe bombs whilst the true fleet lay concealed. The grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne claimed his deceptions so vexed the Führer that his name was inscribed upon the Gestapo's black list.
Published March 1949 by Stanley Paul & Co., this volume emerged during that peculiar period when wartime secrets began their emergence into daylight. Whether one believes Maskelyne's grander claims matters less than the dark romance of the telling. Military historians may dispute the details, yet the book remains a singular artefact from when stage magic and military deception converged beneath the desert sun.
The dust wrapper proclaims its adaptation of "the conjuror's art to the battlefield", promising revelations of tanks, guns, and battleships wrought from misdirection and mirrors. A genuine curiosity for collectors of wartime ephemera or practitioners of the bizarre arts seeking authentic period atmosphere.
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