Wimpole History Festival: Gordon Corera - Secret Pigeon Service

The little-known department’s Operation Columba dropped 16,000 pigeons across Europe to source intelligence from ordinary people living under Nazi occupation. Gordon Corera brings to life the authentic voices from rural France, Holland

and Belgium that were responsible for the rich seam of information – sometimes comic, often tragic, occasionally invaluable – conveyed across the Channel on many tiny pieces of rice paper. Come for the pigeons, stay for the remarkable stories of Belgian villagers with no experience of spying who kept the British up to date on German troop movements and new Nazi weapons.