"Houdini reportedly claimed that, "what the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes". This could have been the motto of the camouflage unit sent to the North African campaign at the height of the Second World War. In The Phantom Army of Alamein, Rick Stroud has illuminated the shadowy antics of this little-recognised outfit during the battle of El Alamein. In doing so, he has created a fascinating study of how the most unlikely characters can become heroes. Among their fold were engravers, painters, cartoonists and sculptors, and their commander, Major Geoffrey Barkas, was an Oscar-winning film director. The brief was to support the Army using a combination of concealment and embellishment created with whatever came to hand. The Surrealist Roland Penrose tutored them, his lover Lee Miller posing nude in camouflage cream and netting as inspiration. And one of the more grandiose members was the Piccadilly magician Jasper Maskelyne, a Chancer tasked with experimental developments, who fogged his own reputation as much as any desert convoy."