How magic and mystery helped win the war.

Jasper Maskelyne came from a family of illusionists and inventors. One of them invented the coin-operated toilet door, the origin of the phrase "spending a penny".

By the 1940s Jasper himself was Britain's most famous magician. His act included swallowing a dozen razor blades and a piece of cotton, then pulling the blades out of his mouth, attached to the cotton, one by one.

But it was his contribution to the war effort that made Maskelyne remarkable.

In 1939, he was 37 but determined to join the army. After a spell at the camouflage training centre, he was posted to the North African desert and military chiefs sent him into action - entertaining the troops with magic tricks.

He had grander ideas of using the art of deception to fool the Germans.

This consistently entertaining documentary told how Churchill realised that mobilising magic against Hitler could work. It could produce uncertainty, meaning the enemy didn't know what was real and what was false.

Maskelyn could made installations appear where they weren't, just as he convinced theatre audiences during his stage tricks. Tanks were made to look like army trucks from the air, complete with tank tracks to complete the illusion.

His wartime illusions became bigger and better. Forty years before magician David Copperfield walked through the Great Wall of China, Maskelyne made Alexandria Harbour disappear. He created a false harbour some miles away that looked like the real one from the air. Hiding the Suez Canal was another idea.

Poor old Rommel didn't stand a chance. For the Battle of El Alamein, Maskelyn conjured up misinformation about where and when the British would attack by using dummy guns, tanks and pipes. Amazingly, some 2,000 dummy vehicles were produced to create the illusion of an army. Today, dummy tanks are still used on the battlefield.

Thjs became his wartime masterpiece although, of course, it was a secret and remained one for many years afterwards He became very bitter at the lack of recognition and emigrated to Kenya, where he died at the age of 70.

Now it looks that at long last he may get the credit he desired - Hollywood star Tom Cruise is planning to make a movie about his wartime magic that proved you could fool some of the enemy some of the time.