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

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This thorough, fascinating, and revelatory account draws on a wealth of archival materials never before seen by any outsider to unveil the inner workings of the world's first spy agency. It also represents a time when Christopher Andrew didn’t have any inside privileged information as he does now [as official historian of MI5]. In a series of meetings between SIS agents and the 'conspirators', SS plans to abduct the SIS team were shelved due to the presence of Dutch police. Illustration: Getty Images Mansfield Cumming, far left, pictured in 1907, became the first head of MI6 upon its founding in 1909. Dust wrapper supplied in archive acetate film protection, this preserves and prolongs the life of the paper, it is not adhered to the book or to the dust wrapper.

John le Carré studied at the University of Bern, where the key part of the operation takes place and went on to work for the British Security Service MI5 before moving into MI6 in the early sixties, based mainly in Germany, with the final denouement to this brilliant story coming memorably in a West Berlin he knew well. At the outbreak of the Second World war the Service, underfunded, was totally unprepared for the swift Germany's swift advance across Europe which left SIS coverage non-existent. Cumming referred to espionage as a "capital sport", and expected his agents to learn the "tradecraft" of espionage while on their missions instead of before being dispatched on their missions. Kendrick’s life sheds light on the development of MI6 itself-he was one of the few men to serve Britain across three wars, two of which while working for the British Secret Service. Tell me about your first book, The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, which is seen by some as the first modern spy thriller and said to have inspired the likes of Graham Greene and John le Carré.Formed in 1909 as the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau, the section grew greatly during the First World War officially adopting its current name around 1920.

No Man Dies Twice is the first book in a series about Peter Ritter, a German detective during the Second World War who investigates a series of murders connected to a plot by the British Special Operations Executive to kill Hitler.For intelligence on German military plans, MI6 largely depended upon Czechoslovak military intelligence from 1937 onward as Paul Thümmel, aka "Agent A-54", a senior officer in the German intelligence service, the Abwehr, who had been bribed into working for Czechoslovakia. He has chosen to emphasise the unglamorous side of espionage, its numbing routine and picayune obsessions. After reading I look forward to finding more of his works that will continue the story into the 21st century. A groundbreaking book, this unprecedented study is the authoritative account of the best-known intelligence organization in the world. Some journalists tend to populate their books with re-creations and imagine what it would have been like, which may or may not have happened.