'Joyful, sad, smart and surprising' NICK HORNBY, bestselling author of High Fidelity and About a Boy
'Full of historical allusions, unforgettable characters, and thrilling escapades' THE MIRROR


Was he about to recruit her into the secret service? She held her breath. Frogwoman, codebreaker, assassin, saboteur - whatever it was, she'd do it!

Oxford, 1938. Ida and Medora are two brilliant young philosophers at the heart of a group who gather in storied rooms to dance, drink and debate theories of right and wrong.

But as the world spins towards war, theoretical questions of life and death become all too real. While her friends are called up to do intelligence work, Ida, the irrepressible Texan outsider, seeks academic distraction. Then she stumbles across secret Nazi information that could radically change the direction of the war. Can she and Medora capture the attention of the spymasters and mandarins in London in time to save thousands of lives?

Seductive, witty and page-turning, Intelligence is the unputdownable new novel from one of the UK's best-loved writers and comedians.