MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949

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Some of SIS's actions since the 2000s have attracted significant controversy, such as its alleged complicity in acts of enhanced interrogation techniques and extraordinary rendition. But Mackenzie said, look, this is 1932, and it is 15 or 16 years since I was doing this, so no damage has been done.

Ian Fleming, who flits through these pages intent on mischief, had such a close relationship with MI6 that many who have penetrated this shadowy world have had a field day looking for 007 prototypes.It has been established the MI6 leaked the Zinoviev letter to the Daily Mail, but it remains unclear if MI6 was aware that the letter was a forgery at the time. The Zinoviev letter played a key role in the defeat of the minority Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald and the victory of the Conservatives under Stanley Baldwin in the general election of 29 October 1924. SIS operations in Asia were hindered by the fact that Europeans tended to stick out in Asia along with an inability to recruit Asian agents. Long before John Le Carré and the cold war, the connection between British novelists and SIS was explicit. Readers seeking a story of ‘Daring Do’, ‘Cloak and Dagger’ and ‘Spies and Counter Spies’ might also find it worthy of their attention.

Backed by numerous interviews with intelligence officers and their agents, this engaging inside story throws light on many wartime incidents that had previously remained unexplained.In conclusion, this is a very thorough book indeed and one that I would wholeheartedly recommend to others to read. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. The report was authored by leading historians and experts who were granted unprecedented access to the archives of British intelligence.

Demonstrates the importance of intelligence history to any understanding of 20th Century international affairs.It also represents a time when Christopher Andrew didn’t have any inside privileged information as he does now [as official historian of MI5].