The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

When Roald Dahl, a dashing young wounded RAF pilot, took up his post at the British Embassy in Washington in 1942, his assignment was to use his good looks, wit, and considerable charm to gain access to the most powerful figures in American political life. A patriot eager to do his part to save his country from a Nazi invasion, he invaded the upper reaches of the US government and Georgetown Society, winning over first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin; befriending wartime leaders from Henry Wallace to Henry Morgenthau; and seducing the glamorous freshman congresswoman Claire Booth Luce.
 
Dahl would soon be caught up in a complex web of deception masterminded by William Stephenson, AKA Intrepid, Churchill's legendary spy chief, who,  with President Roosevelt's tacit permission, mounted a secret campaign of propaganda and political subversion to weaken American isolate forces, bringing the country into the war against Germany, and influence US policy in favor of England.
 
In an account better than spy fiction, Jeanette Conant shows doll progressing from a reluctant diplomat to sly man about town, parlaying his moral boosting wartime propaganda work into a successful career as an author, which leads to his entree into the Roosevelt White House and Hyde Park initiation into British intelligence elite dirty trick squad, all in less than three years.
 
It is an extraordinary tale of deceit, double-dealing, and moral ambiguity -  all in the name of victory. Richly detailed and metaculously researched, Conant's Compelling narrative draws a never before seen wartime letters, diaries, and interviews and provides a rare, and remarkably candid, insiders view of the counterintelligence game during the turbulent days of World War II.