MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service
Aug 2011 · Hachette UK
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About this ebook
From the host of The Rest is Classified podcast, this is the secret history of MI6 - from the Cold War to the present day.
The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created over a century ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carré. In MI6, security expert Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.
It tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of the Second World War, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue, the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with working for British intelligence.
The grand dramas of the Cold War and its aftershocks - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 9/11 and the Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies at the centre of the narrative. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to their sworn enemies. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the truth is often more remarkable than the fiction.
The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created over a century ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carré. In MI6, security expert Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.
It tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of the Second World War, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue, the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with working for British intelligence.
The grand dramas of the Cold War and its aftershocks - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 9/11 and the Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies at the centre of the narrative. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to their sworn enemies. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the truth is often more remarkable than the fiction.
Ratings and reviews
4.0
3 reviews
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November 19, 2012
Overall a very interesting book that reveals the continued struggle of SIS to devise an effective operating model that embraces the current threat landscape whilst not forgeting the previous one. Plenty of anecdotes that both shine the stone but also show it to be a rough diamond.
About the author
Gordon Corera is a Security Correspondent for BBC News. In that role, he covers the work of Britain's intelligence agencies. His documentary series 'MI6: A century in the Shadows' was broadcast on Radio 4 in the summer of 2009. His series 'The Real Spooks' on MI5 was broadcast in December 2007. He is the author of SHOPPING FOR BOMBS on the rise and fall of the Pakistani nuclear arms salesman AQ Khan. He was educated at Oxford and Harvard Universities and joined the BBC in 1997.
https://twitter.com/gordoncorera
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