" A lot of Britain’s secret war was fought at the end of long, sweeping drives like this one, running through neglected parks, between overgrown rhododendrons and dripping elms, to hidden country houses where codes were broken, special operations planned, the conversations of captured Nazi generals bugged, spies interrogated, agents trained. Kay had walked this drive for the past two years – always with an unwanted memory of school – and at the end of it stood Danesfield House, a mock-Elizabethan mansion, built at the turn of the century, as sparkling white as the icing on a wedding cake, with crenellated walls, steep red roofs and tall red-brick chimneys. "

― Robert Harris , V2: A Novel of World War II