Mitchell has also written a book called "The Cost of a Reputation", about the Aldington-Tolstoy libel trial which took place in London in 1989 and concerned the claims that a controversial British Army operation in May 1945 handed back tens of thousands of Cossack and Yugoslav refugees from Stalin and Tito, for the most part illegally, to the dictators. The book mainly concerned the London trial, at which (Mitchell claims) Lord Aldington, who had issued the illegal orders in 1945 as Staff Brigadier, perjured himself. In this, as an ex-Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, he was assisted by both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defense.