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WW2 agents 'failed the honey trap test' at country house training centre

Second World War trainee secret agents were tested for their resilience to the 'honey trap' at a Surrey manor house, according to a new analysis of the role Britain's country properties played during the war.

But few succeeded in keeping their secrets to themselves when plied with alcohol and seduced by pretty women at Wanborough Manor near Guildford, according to the architectural historian Marcus Binney.

Writing in the latest edition of Country Life magazine, Binney said tests of recruits for Sir Winston Churchill's Special Operations Executive at the Elizabethan house on Surrey's Hog's Back ridge only proved how fallible most of them were.

Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)