Using newly available government records, private papers, and documents obtained through Freedom of Information, this book tells the secret story of UK security vetting from 1909 to the present. Although Britain avoided American-style red-baiting and McCarthy-like witch-hunts, successive UK governments have, like their 'Five Eyes' allies, implemented security procedures to protect government, defence and industry from so-called 'subversives' and 'fellow travellers'.

Intelligence and Espionage: Secrets and Spies provides a global introduction to the role of intelligence – a key, but sometimes controversial, aspect of ensuring national security. Separating fact from fiction, the book draws on past examples to explore the use and misuse of intelligence, examine why failures take place and address important ethical issues over its use.Divided into two parts, the book adopts a thematic approach to the topic, guiding the reader through the ...

Drawing on recently released documents and private papers, this is the first book-length study to examine the intimate relationship between the Attlee government and Britain's intelligence and security services at the start of the Cold War. Often praised for the formation of the modern-day 'welfare state', Attlee's government also played a significant, if little understood, role in combating communism at home and overseas, often in the face of vocal, sustained opposition from its own backb...

A Daily Mail Book of the Year and a The Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2021'Monumental.. Authoritative and highly readable.' Ben Macintyre, The Times'A fascinating history of royal espionage.' Sunday Times'Excellent... Compelling' GuardianFor the first time, Spying and the Crown uncovers the remarkable rela...

'Tim Tate, in Hitler's British Traitors, [explores] the entire grimy landscape of British treachery during the Second World War and the astonishing rogues' gallery of traitors working to help Nazi Germany win. [He makes] excellent use of the vast trove of material declassified by MI5 in recent years.' - Ben Macintyre, The TimesHitler's British Traitors is the first authoritative account of a well-kept secret: the British Fifth Column and its activ...

The first volume of Hennessy's postwar history of Britain concerns an age dominated by the shadow of war. With the beginnings of the Cold War, the foundations of the new Europe and the granting of independence of former colonies, Britain was forced to negotiate a new place in the world. It was also a time of rationing and of rebuilding, marked by the founding of the NHS and the welfare state. This comprehensive history embraces both high politics and everyday experience. It recreates the m...

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, Peter Hennessy's Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties captures Britain in an extraordinary decade, emerging from the shadow of war into growing affluence.The 1950s was the decade in which Roger Bannister ran the four-minute mile, Bill Haley released 'Rock Around the Clock', rationing ended and Britain embarked on the traumatic, disastrous Suez War.In this highly enjoyable, original book, Peter ...

In the 1920s, many in the British establishment became convinced that their way of life was being threatened by the new Soviet state. The British government launched vast spying operations in response, carrying out surveillance on not only suspect Russians, but British aristocrats, Bloomsbury artists, ordinary workers and even MPs. What they discovered had profound ramifications for the whole of British society, dividing the nation and laying the foundations for the later Cold War....

Germany, spring 1945. Hitler is dead and his armies crushed. Across the conquered Reich, cities lie devastated by Allied saturation bombing; their traumatised populations, exhausted and embittered by defeat, face a future of acute privation and hardship.Such was the broken state of the nation in which a British civilian and military force arrived in the spring and summer of 1945. Their zone of occupation was the northern and northwestern part of Germany, the countr...

Decades before the Berlin Wall went up, a Cold War had already begun raging. But for Bolshevik Russia, Great Britain - not America - was the enemy. Now, for the first time, Victor Madeira tells a story that has been hidden away for nearly a century. Drawing on over sixty Russian, British and French archival collections, Britannia and the Bear offers a compelling new narrative about how two great powers of the time did battle, both openly and in theshadows.By exploring Briti...

'A seminal history' - The Wall Street Journal'Gripping and shocking' - Tim Shipman, author of All Out War'An extraordinary development' - The Times'An impressively detailed account of a remarkable alliance' - Jeremy Bowen, The New Statesman'A remarkable book . . . delves into the fascinating individuals involved.' Daily BeastT...

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." – The WhoMany alternate history pieces explore Britain's fate if the United Kingdom fell to Nazi Germany. But few consider what might come afterwards. The chaos of an overextended Third Reich would not last forever. Europe would eventually be liberated. But with no staging post in the Atlantic, isolationism might take hold in the United States, and the role of 'liberator' would be played by Hitler's greatest foe – Stalin himself.