MI6 : British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909-45

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, first edition, 1983. Cloth, 8vo, 25 cm,. xvi, 266 pp, plus 16 pp of plates. A densely-detailed history of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, from its modest beginning in 1909 to the end of the Second World War. This was the first authoritative account of MI6's operations and structure. The main part of the book concerns the service's operations during World War II and includes some remarkable successes - and failures: how MI6 financed a glamorous confidante of the head of the German secret service; how a suspected French traitor was murdered by mistake; how Franco's military advisers were bribed to keep Spain out of the war; how the Swedish secret police were blackmailed into helping the British war effort; how a sabotage operation in neutral Tangiers enabled the Allied landings in North Africa to proceed undetected; and how Britain's generals ignored the first ULTRA decrypts because M16 said that the information had come from 'a well-placed agent code-named BONIFACE'. Operations undertaken by almost all of M16's overseas stations are recounted in extraordinary detail and will fascinate both the professional intelligence officer and the amateur historian alike. The book contains organizational charts to illustrate M16's internal structure and wartime network of Stations abroad. Backed by hundreds of interviews with intelligence officers and their agents, this is a highly readable inside story. Near Very Good in a slightly edgeworn dustwrapper.