chaos time

People through the ages, on silver screens and stages

[total-oblivion255]

I read some notes I made a while back about an Operation Mincemeat au and I was actually on to something. Good job past me. Now if only I had motivation

[total-oblivion255]

My new favorite hobby is making Operation Mincemeat themed backgrounds for my phone.

[veryfastnighuncatchable]

Having finally seen mincemeat on stage I have to conclude that I relate to Monty specifically when he crashes out over them looking through his briefcase like I too would crash out over my coworkers discovering my self-insert ao3 fanfic and reading it aloud at the office. He was valid for this. I mean there were a lot of other things he wasn't valid for but this one, yeah, I see you Monty.

[thischarmingdog]

my advice for women is eat more, shave less, and do whatever the fuck you want

[itspins]

DAY OFF TODAY SO MINCE TEXTPOSTS

[rottingclockwork]

Hey guys… I’ve been working. 😛

[yourboywitch]

just walked out of the show, Operation MincePEAK. how does one join the fandom?

[zeldageek35]

I did this for The Man Who Never Was, so here are my favourite quotes from Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre (warning: it's very long):

'Unlike most students, Ewen had a personal valet and a 1910 Lancia two-seater sports car he called "Steve".' (Pg 26)

'They did, however, find time to invent table tennis.' (Pg 26)

'The accident left him with a lopsided smile, which he deployed charmingly but sparingly, and a useful dental ledge on which to hang his pipe.' (Pg 27)

'Ivor Montagu, meanwhile, was pursuing a different career path. By the age of twenty-two, he had founded the English Table Tennis Association, written Table Tennis Today, founded the British Film Society [...] and made two expeditions to the Soviet Union, where he perfected his Russian.' (Pg 27)

'Together they traveled to Hollywood, where Ivor became close friends with Charlie Chaplin, whom he taught to swear in Russian.' (Pg 28)

'While Ewen hobnobbed with generals and ambassadors...' (Pg 28)

'[Ewen] recalled "looking out to sea and realizing all had gone smash for me."' (pg 29)

'Spilsbury inhaled carbon monoxide to test its effect on the body and made notes on his sensations (which were unpleasant). He climbed down a manhole in Redcross Street to check on gas that had killed a workman. When he accidentally swallowed meningitis germs in a hospital laboratory, he "just carried on".' (pg 42)

'There was always plenty of cheese.' (Pg 48)

'Hester [Leggatt] [...] repeatedly reprimanded her for sprinting through the hushed offices in St. James's Street: "Don't run, Miss Leslie!"' (Pg 76)

'Montagu and Cholmondeley were delighted with the plot they had created, with its looming premonition of disaster, a dashing but flawed hero, a sexy, faintly dippy heroine, and a rich cast of supporting characters.' (Pg 82)

'Ivor Montagu was addicted to founding, and joining, different clubs. From the Cheese Eaters League and the English Table Tennis Association, he had graduated to the Association of Cine Technicians, and Zoological Society, Marylebone Cricket Club, the editorial board of Labour Monthly, the World Council of Peace, the Friends of the Soviet Union, Southampton United Football Club, the Society for Cultural Relation with Soviet Russia, and chairmanship of the Woolwich-Plumstead branch of the Anti-War Congress.' (Pg 85)

'Montagu had once been a supporter of Bevanm the smooth, patritian chief of the London Controlling Section. [...] Bevan took malicious pleasure in ordering Montagu about; Montagu responded with withering contempt.' (Pg 99)

'While Montagu fought it out with Bevan...' (Pg 101)

'Bevan had left the details to Montagu and Cholmondeley and now found himself trying to explain the pathology of chemical poisoning to a prime minister in his nightwear, and scrambling the facts in the process.' (Pg 128)

'Vivian was right, of course, but also profoundly wrong.' (Pg 133)

'On the other hand, [Ivor's] interest in table tennis was neither puzzling nor malign. He just liked table tennis.' (pg 133)

'Sometimes a table-tennis ball is just a table-tennis ball.' (Pg 133)

'Stripping and then dressing the dead body [...] was a task they "heartily disliked".' (Pg 136)

'Mellows identified a new ailment he named Sacambayaitis: "Claustrophobia brought on by being shut up in an unhealthy valley between high mountains for month after month, working hard, living on a monotonous diet, with no diversions, subject to the constant fear of possible attack by bandits, and day by day living on the edge of a physical volcano."' (Pg 145)

'The notice reads like a description of the man Montagu would have liked to have been: the desk-bound literary genius who insists on fulfilling his patriotic duty, only to die tragically.' (pg 182-3)

'After dropping off a genial American general in one part of the Mediterranean, picking up a grumpy French one in another, blowing up a whale, and becoming, briefly, an American submarine, their new mission was just about par for the course.' (Pg 189)

'This mission, Scott reflected, wrongly, was going to be "easy, even enjoyable."' (Pg 190)

'Francis Haselden was not an actor. [...] He was a gentle, civilized, sixty-two-year-old mining engineer and businessman, who had settled in Huelva two decades earlier and might reasonably have expected to spend the rest of his life playing golf and running his mine supplies company.' (Pg 196)

'The final member of the reception committee was a young American pilot called Willie Watkins.' (Pg 198)

'[Willie Watkins was] then transferred to the home of Francis Haselden.' (Pg 198)

'Pascual del Pobil liked the English vice-consul; he believed he was doing Haselden a favor; and he wanted his lunch and siesta.' (Pg 199)

'It's intended recipient was Adolf Clauss, the senior Abwehr officer in Huelva and the man identified by Montagu as the "super-super-spy" most likely to intercept the documents.' (Pg 203)

'I managed to make the Minister of Marine so sorry for me because he could not do what I wanted that in the end he did it, at considerable hazard to himself, just because he felt he was letting a friend down if he didn't.' (Pg 210)

'Adolf Clauss had failed to intercept the documents in Huelva; his agent Luis Canis has failed to obtain them in Cádiz; it was now up to Karl-Erich Kühlenthal to try to snare them in Madrid.' (pg 214)

'Montagu's primary reaction to tension was irritation. Reality's stubborn refusal to conform to his expectations made him peevish.' (Pg 215)

'Montagu knew he sounded petty---"I always was a selfish sh[--]"---but could not help himself.' (Pg 216)

'Colonel José López Barrón Cerruti was Spain's most senior secret policeman, a keen fascist, and an exceptionally tough cookie.' (Pg 218)

'Kühlenthal, by contrast, with the mixture of eagerness and gullibility that defined him, seems to have entertained no such doubts.' (pg 222)

'Given the pressure, {Montagu] muttered, it was "surprising that we only have five breakdowns among the female staff."' (Pg 236)

'Montagu began leafing through the printouts and then suddenly buttered a loud whoop and banged the table so hard his coffee cup flew off the desk.' (Pg 236)

'For months, they had been working to get the bag into the wrong hands, as if by accident. Now it might very well have fallen into the wrong hands, by accident.' (Pg 244)

'It takes a brave man to stand up to the boss in such circumstances. The men surrounding Hitler were not made of such stuff.' (Pg 254)

'Goebbels had no faith in the Abwehr, which made such extravagant claims for its spy networks but produced so little of real use. "Despite all the assertions, our political and military intelligence just stinks," he complained.' (Pg 255)

'Both departments were politely, but firmly, told to mind their own business.' (Pg 260)

'The Times was the place all important people wanted to be seen dead in, and it is not possible to be deader than in the death columns of Britain's most venerable newspaper. That said, several people have been pronounced dead in the press while being very much alive. [...] This, however, was the first time in the newspaper's history that a person was formally pronounced dead without ever having been alive.' (pg 261)

'Once Rosemary was in Bill Jewell's emotional periscope, he pursued her with unswerving determination.' (pg 266)

'Jewell squired Rosemary around town in an ancient Hillman squired by the Eighth Flotilla and known as "The Wren Trap", less for its romantic allure, which was zero, than for its captive potential.' (Pg 266)

'The logistics of the operation would have boggled most minds: the American contingent alone called for 6.6 million sets of rations, five thousand crated airplanes, five thousand carrier pigeons and accompanying pigeoneers, and a somewhat unambitious 144,000 condoms, fewer than two each.' (Pg 269)

'"It was a most excellent cruise," he wrote, describing the hellish trip to Sicily.' (Pg 277)

'And so, as the bombs fell around him, this heroic British undertaker sat in his own grave, wearing his swimming trunks and a helmet, drinking a nice cup of tea.' (Pg 282)

'Montagu was so delighted by the success of Mincemeat that he proposed a sequel.' (Pg 287)

'When he heard about the Italian coastal defenders had failed to repulse the attack, Goebbels muttered darkly about "macaroni-eaters" but refrained from pointing out that he had never quite believed in the Abwehr's great intelligence coup.' (Pg 289)

'Mussolini sat impassively through the two-hour monologue.' (Pg 292)

'[Montagu] toured the United States, gave lectures, and appeared on American television alongside a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs.' (Pg 307)

'Kühlenthal turned out to be much better at buying and selling clothes than at buying and selling secrets.' (pg 315-6)

'As a judge, Montagu proved scrupulously fair, wonderfully rude, and almost always embroiled in one controversy or another.' (Pg 321)

'[Montagu's] corrosive humor was usually misunderstood; his wit was so sharp and sarcastic it could humble the most arrogant barrister, and did so, frequently.' (Pg 321)

'"Few judges have trodden so hard on the corns of so many people's dignity as this tall, witty, testy, wartime naval commander with the sensitive face and the turbulent tongue. But so few judges have been so quick with the air of a boxer shaking hands after a fight."' (Pg 322)

[zeldageek35]

So...turns out I missed one (whoops!)

'Montagu was something of a connoisseur of female beauty.' (Pg 31)

[zeldageek35]

I did this for The Man Who Never Was, so here are my favourite quotes from Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre (warning: it's very long):

'Unlike most students, Ewen had a personal valet and a 1910 Lancia two-seater sports car he called "Steve".' (Pg 26)

'They did, however, find time to invent table tennis.' (Pg 26)

'The accident left him with a lopsided smile, which he deployed charmingly but sparingly, and a useful dental ledge on which to hang his pipe.' (Pg 27)

'Ivor Montagu, meanwhile, was pursuing a different career path. By the age of twenty-two, he had founded the English Table Tennis Association, written Table Tennis Today, founded the British Film Society [...] and made two expeditions to the Soviet Union, where he perfected his Russian.' (Pg 27)

'Together they traveled to Hollywood, where Ivor became close friends with Charlie Chaplin, whom he taught to swear in Russian.' (Pg 28)

'While Ewen hobnobbed with generals and ambassadors...' (Pg 28)

'[Ewen] recalled "looking out to sea and realizing all had gone smash for me."' (pg 29)

'Spilsbury inhaled carbon monoxide to test its effect on the body and made notes on his sensations (which were unpleasant). He climbed down a manhole in Redcross Street to check on gas that had killed a workman. When he accidentally swallowed meningitis germs in a hospital laboratory, he "just carried on".' (pg 42)

'There was always plenty of cheese.' (Pg 48)

'Hester [Leggatt] [...] repeatedly reprimanded her for sprinting through the hushed offices in St. James's Street: "Don't run, Miss Leslie!"' (Pg 76)

'Montagu and Cholmondeley were delighted with the plot they had created, with its looming premonition of disaster, a dashing but flawed hero, a sexy, faintly dippy heroine, and a rich cast of supporting characters.' (Pg 82)

'Ivor Montagu was addicted to founding, and joining, different clubs. From the Cheese Eaters League and the English Table Tennis Association, he had graduated to the Association of Cine Technicians, and Zoological Society, Marylebone Cricket Club, the editorial board of Labour Monthly, the World Council of Peace, the Friends of the Soviet Union, Southampton United Football Club, the Society for Cultural Relation with Soviet Russia, and chairmanship of the Woolwich-Plumstead branch of the Anti-War Congress.' (Pg 85)

'Montagu had once been a supporter of Bevanm the smooth, patritian chief of the London Controlling Section. [...] Bevan took malicious pleasure in ordering Montagu about; Montagu responded with withering contempt.' (Pg 99)

'While Montagu fought it out with Bevan...' (Pg 101)

'Bevan had left the details to Montagu and Cholmondeley and now found himself trying to explain the pathology of chemical poisoning to a prime minister in his nightwear, and scrambling the facts in the process.' (Pg 128)

'Vivian was right, of course, but also profoundly wrong.' (Pg 133)

'On the other hand, [Ivor's] interest in table tennis was neither puzzling nor malign. He just liked table tennis.' (pg 133)

'Sometimes a table-tennis ball is just a table-tennis ball.' (Pg 133)

'Stripping and then dressing the dead body [...] was a task they "heartily disliked".' (Pg 136)

'Mellows identified a new ailment he named Sacambayaitis: "Claustrophobia brought on by being shut up in an unhealthy valley between high mountains for month after month, working hard, living on a monotonous diet, with no diversions, subject to the constant fear of possible attack by bandits, and day by day living on the edge of a physical volcano."' (Pg 145)

'The notice reads like a description of the man Montagu would have liked to have been: the desk-bound literary genius who insists on fulfilling his patriotic duty, only to die tragically.' (pg 182-3)

'After dropping off a genial American general in one part of the Mediterranean, picking up a grumpy French one in another, blowing up a whale, and becoming, briefly, an American submarine, their new mission was just about par for the course.' (Pg 189)

'This mission, Scott reflected, wrongly, was going to be "easy, even enjoyable."' (Pg 190)

'Francis Haselden was not an actor. [...] He was a gentle, civilized, sixty-two-year-old mining engineer and businessman, who had settled in Huelva two decades earlier and might reasonably have expected to spend the rest of his life playing golf and running his mine supplies company.' (Pg 196)

'The final member of the reception committee was a young American pilot called Willie Watkins.' (Pg 198)

'[Willie Watkins was] then transferred to the home of Francis Haselden.' (Pg 198)

'Pascual del Pobil liked the English vice-consul; he believed he was doing Haselden a favor; and he wanted his lunch and siesta.' (Pg 199)

'It's intended recipient was Adolf Clauss, the senior Abwehr officer in Huelva and the man identified by Montagu as the "super-super-spy" most likely to intercept the documents.' (Pg 203)

'I managed to make the Minister of Marine so sorry for me because he could not do what I wanted that in the end he did it, at considerable hazard to himself, just because he felt he was letting a friend down if he didn't.' (Pg 210)

'Adolf Clauss had failed to intercept the documents in Huelva; his agent Luis Canis has failed to obtain them in Cádiz; it was now up to Karl-Erich Kühlenthal to try to snare them in Madrid.' (pg 214)

'Montagu's primary reaction to tension was irritation. Reality's stubborn refusal to conform to his expectations made him peevish.' (Pg 215)

'Montagu knew he sounded petty---"I always was a selfish sh[--]"---but could not help himself.' (Pg 216)

'Colonel José López Barrón Cerruti was Spain's most senior secret policeman, a keen fascist, and an exceptionally tough cookie.' (Pg 218)

'Kühlenthal, by contrast, with the mixture of eagerness and gullibility that defined him, seems to have entertained no such doubts.' (pg 222)

'Given the pressure, {Montagu] muttered, it was "surprising that we only have five breakdowns among the female staff."' (Pg 236)

'Montagu began leafing through the printouts and then suddenly buttered a loud whoop and banged the table so hard his coffee cup flew off the desk.' (Pg 236)

'For months, they had been working to get the bag into the wrong hands, as if by accident. Now it might very well have fallen into the wrong hands, by accident.' (Pg 244)

'It takes a brave man to stand up to the boss in such circumstances. The men surrounding Hitler were not made of such stuff.' (Pg 254)

'Goebbels had no faith in the Abwehr, which made such extravagant claims for its spy networks but produced so little of real use. "Despite all the assertions, our political and military intelligence just stinks," he complained.' (Pg 255)

'Both departments were politely, but firmly, told to mind their own business.' (Pg 260)

'The Times was the place all important people wanted to be seen dead in, and it is not possible to be deader than in the death columns of Britain's most venerable newspaper. That said, several people have been pronounced dead in the press while being very much alive. [...] This, however, was the first time in the newspaper's history that a person was formally pronounced dead without ever having been alive.' (pg 261)

'Once Rosemary was in Bill Jewell's emotional periscope, he pursued her with unswerving determination.' (pg 266)

'Jewell squired Rosemary around town in an ancient Hillman squired by the Eighth Flotilla and known as "The Wren Trap", less for its romantic allure, which was zero, than for its captive potential.' (Pg 266)

'The logistics of the operation would have boggled most minds: the American contingent alone called for 6.6 million sets of rations, five thousand crated airplanes, five thousand carrier pigeons and accompanying pigeoneers, and a somewhat unambitious 144,000 condoms, fewer than two each.' (Pg 269)

'"It was a most excellent cruise," he wrote, describing the hellish trip to Sicily.' (Pg 277)

'And so, as the bombs fell around him, this heroic British undertaker sat in his own grave, wearing his swimming trunks and a helmet, drinking a nice cup of tea.' (Pg 282)

'Montagu was so delighted by the success of Mincemeat that he proposed a sequel.' (Pg 287)

'When he heard about the Italian coastal defenders had failed to repulse the attack, Goebbels muttered darkly about "macaroni-eaters" but refrained from pointing out that he had never quite believed in the Abwehr's great intelligence coup.' (Pg 289)

'Mussolini sat impassively through the two-hour monologue.' (Pg 292)

'[Montagu] toured the United States, gave lectures, and appeared on American television alongside a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs.' (Pg 307)

'Kühlenthal turned out to be much better at buying and selling clothes than at buying and selling secrets.' (pg 315-6)

'As a judge, Montagu proved scrupulously fair, wonderfully rude, and almost always embroiled in one controversy or another.' (Pg 321)

'[Montagu's] corrosive humor was usually misunderstood; his wit was so sharp and sarcastic it could humble the most arrogant barrister, and did so, frequently.' (Pg 321)

'"Few judges have trodden so hard on the corns of so many people's dignity as this tall, witty, testy, wartime naval commander with the sensitive face and the turbulent tongue. But so few judges have been so quick with the air of a boxer shaking hands after a fight."' (Pg 322)

[zeldageek35]

So...turns out I missed one (whoops!)

'Montagu was something of a connoisseur of female beauty.' (Pg 31)

[elekanahmennahmen]

my first attempt at mince textposts! mostly monty centred but let’s not talk about that

[mincemeat-confessions]

I think they should have worked at least one sardine pun into the script, because the real fake invasion plans did have sardine puns in them

.

[total-oblivion255]

Ewen Montagu would not be pleased with the lack of sardine puns

[transmonty]

Glad this is a universal agreement between movie and musical fans

[vincethemincebince]

The nonchalant pandemic is real, bring back having a fucking personality (even if that personality is just operation mincemeat)

[chaos--unlimited]

here’s your daily reminder that when people say using the same concept as another fic writer in your fandom is okay because the readers will be happy to have 2 of the fic concept they like, they’re right

I have read the same concept about the same characters in the same situation like 3-4 times and I’ve loved it every time

[total-oblivion255]

Everyday I wake up and yearn for the minced meat

[determinedowl23]

non-operation mincemeat fans: which of these does NOT happen in the hit musical operation mincemeat

ian fleming is the target of a “your mom” joke

a coroner breaks into mi5 headquarters and later gets arrested for fraud

there’s a character who’s a filmmaker, table tennis champion, and communist spy

mi5 did numerous tests to see if submarine cars work (they don’t)

there’s a nazi boyband edm number that never gets brought up again

the members of the operation team play dress-up with the corpse

one character makes a movie where he becomes the king of england

a naval officer tries to flirt with a captain with his lack of marine knowledge

a propeller on an american plane turns into a swastika

there’s a birthday party at a morgue

a pilot crash lands in spain and immediately goes to get a sangria

operation mincemeat fan/see results

Voting ended onSep 11, 2025

not including the main plot point which is “mi5 agents use a homeless man’s corpse to trick hitler and it somehow works” which is a very real thing that happened both in the show and in real life

a post with the answer and a video with the real scenes will be posted next week so stay tuned!!!

[hylian-prosecutor]

You know what? If Bevan can have anachronistic technology so can everyone else. Just for tonight.

does this stupid thing count as character study. please tell me it somehow counts as character study