Special Operations Executive
Videos
Special Operations Executive was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local resistance movements during World Wa
Sir Campbell Stuart was the director of Electra House.
SOE might not have been possible without Joan Bright Astley, Secretarial Typist and Personal Assistant to Jo Holland. She also ran secret war rooms for Winston Churchill, and is considered one of the primary inspirations for Miss Moneypenny.
Major General Colin McVean Gubbins, director of SOE from September 1943
SOE memorial plaque in the cloister of Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, unveiled by Major General Gubbins in April 1969
Colin Gubbins
Videos
Major-General Sir Colin McVean Gubbins, was one of the co-founders of the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance
Special Operations Executive
…SOE, would later be revealed to be one of the primary inspirations for the fictional character Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond series. It is only in Colin Gubbins' official accounting of the story (he wrote the first official history of the SOE) that any animosity existed between the two men, which modern historians…
Hugh Dalton (right), Minister of Economic Warfare, and Colin Gubbins, chief of the Special Operations Executive, talking to a Czech officer during a visit to Czech troops near Leamington Spa, Warwickshire