British Intelligence History

From one of the foremost historians of the period and the acclaimed author of Inferno and Catastrophe: 1914, The Secret War is a sweeping examination of one of the most important yet underexplored aspects of World War II—intelligence—showing how espionage successes and failures by the United...

In the treacherous waters of the Taiwan Strait, the fate of freedom and trade hangs in the balance. As the world watches with bated breath, one question looms large: can China successfully invade Taiwan? The answer lies in the uncharted waters of military history, where the tides of war have shaped the destiny of nations. From D-Day to today's digital deterrence, amphibious assault is usually bloody. Why China CANNOT Invade Taiwan. examines this vital military tactic through history, exploring its evolution alongside the unique challenges posed by Taiwan's strategic location in the Pacific ...

Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of "The Cambridge Spies" - Maclean, Philby, Blunt - brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers.

In fiction, the spy is a glamorous figure whose secrets make or break peace, but, historically, has intelligence really been a vital step to military victories? In this breakthrough study, the preeminent war historian John Keegan goes to the heart of a series of important conflicts to develop a...

From Berlin to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the stories of the agents on the front lines of British intelligence. And the truth is often more remarkable than fiction.

MI6 has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created a hundred years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.

The astonishing true story of the Berlin Tunnel, one of the West’s greatest espionage operations of the Cold War—and the dangerous Soviet mole who betrayed it. Its code name was “Operation Gold,” a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into...

From the twentieth century onward, women took on an extraordinary range of roles in intelligence, defying the conventions of their time. Across both world wars, far from being a small part of covert operations, women ran spy networks and escape lines, parachuted behind enemy lines, and interrogated prisoners. And, back in Bletchley and Whitehall, women's vital administrative work in MI offices kept the British war engine running. In this major, panoramic history, Helen Fry looks at the rich and varied work women undertook as civilians and in uniform.

For decades there has been argument in the media and amongst politicians about the possible existence and extent of a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland. MRF Shadow Troop confirms there was such an agenda in the early, chaotic days of British military intervention across the Irish Sea. But amongst the mountain of speculation there is little of any accuracy or authority relating to this period.

The British Royal Family and the intelligence community are two of the most mysterious and mythologized actors of the British State. Crown, Cloak, and Dagger offers a new history of how the two have been inextricably linked from the reign of Queen Victoria to the present.

END OF EXISTENCE, the second instalment of the Kirkland Finn military thriller series, tells the story of a female environmentalist who has grown tired of humankind. Written in a cinematic style with relentless action from Hereford in the UK to the wastelands of Russia, Forrest of Finland and Lapland of Sweden, Andy Munro’s END OF EXISTENCE is action-packed fiction from start to end. Follow the adventures of SAS Captain Kirkland Finn and his squad of highly skilled covert operative soldiers as they fight to eliminate a terrorist biological warfare threat with the potential to wipe out ...

A “constantly captivating…well-researched and often moving” (The Wall Street Journal) history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States confronted the USSR during the Cold War. In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a...

Major investigative nonfiction on one of the most important stories of our time -- the spread of nuclear weapons -- written by two award-winning journalists who for years have followed the trail of the world's most notorious arms dealer. The world has entered a second nuclear age. For the first...

'A superb book’ – Observer ‘Gripping, vivid and compelling’ – The Critic ‘Humane, absorbing and meticulous’ – New Statesman ‘An extraordinary book’ James O’Brien, TLS Three Weeks in July is the extraordinary and definitive account of the events of the 7/7 London bombings...

The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II. Between 1941 and 1944...

In 1940 Winston Churchill established the Special Operations Executive to "set Europe ablaze". Three years later David Smiley and Billy McLean were parachuted into Northern Greece and crossed the border into Albania to do just that. For the next eight months Smiley mediated between the competing resistance factions and organized them to conduct ambushes and acts of sabotage on fascist armies and infrastructure.

To the undiscerning eye, they were secretaries, typists, personal assistants, and telephonists. But those innocuous job titles provided the perfect cover for what were in reality a range of complex technical, clerical, and occupational roles. Often overlooked and underestimated by outsiders, the women of British intelligence encoded, decoded, and translated enemy messages, wrote propaganda, and oversaw agents, performing duties as diverse as they were indispensable.

The Chamberlain Mandate... By the spring of 1941 Britain’s strategic situation was considerably improved, in no small part due to what sympathetic historians would call the ‘Chamberlain Mandate’. The Italians were heading for defeat in Africa, with their German allies distracted by their own preparations for Operation Barbarossa. The focus on Hitler’s dreams for a grand crusade in the east to sweep away Bolshevism and secure new lands for the Reich removed the threat of invasion from the British mainland for now, but threatened to magnify the power of Nazi Germany if the USSR proved...

Behind the locked doors of three mansions in London's exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens neighborhood, the British Secret Service established a highly secret prison in 1940: the London Cage. Here recalcitrant German prisoners of war were subjected to "special intelligence treatment." The stakes were high: the war's outcome could hinge on obtaining information German prisoners were determined to withhold. After the war, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were housed in the Cage, revamped as an important center for investigating German war crimes.

MIND FORCE is a gripping action-adventure special forces thriller crammed full of twists, turns, espionage and military combat (411 pages). Join 22nd Special Air Service Regiment Captain Kirkland Finn as he battles an East German crime lord and his squad of ex-KSK mercenaries across multiple European countries. A fiction novel with covert military action, thrilling car and motorbike chases, helicopters, and fight scenes, written in a refreshing cinematic style without long-winded descriptions and meaningless dialogue. MIND FORCE is the third instalment of the Kirkland Finn military action-...

In fiction, the spy is a glamorous figure whose secrets make or break peace, but, historically, has intelligence really been a vital step to military victories? In this breakthrough study, the preeminent war historian John Keegan goes to the heart of a series of important conflicts to develop a...