In literature and film the spy chief is an all-knowing, all-powerful figure who masterfully moves spies into action like pieces on a chessboard. How close to reality is that depiction, and what does it really take to be an effective leader in the world of intelligence?This first volume of Spy Chiefs broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of intelligence leaders in foreign affairs and national security in the United States and United Kingdom from the early 1940s to the p...

Throughout history and across cultures, the spy chief has been a leader of the state security apparatus and an essential adviser to heads of state. In democracies, the spy chief has become a public figure, and intelligence activities have been brought under the rule of law. In authoritarian regimes, however, the spy chief was and remains a frightening and opaque figure who exercises secret influence abroad and engages in repression at home.This second volume of Spy Chiefs goes beyo...

Classified is a fascinating account of the British state's long obsession with secrecy and the ways it sought to prevent information about its secret activities from entering the public domain. Drawing on recently declassified documents, unpublished correspondence and exclusive interviews with key officials and journalists, Christopher Moran pays particular attention to the ways that the press and memoirs have been managed by politicians and spies. He argues that, by the 1960s, governments...

A timely work of major historical importance, examining the whole spectrum of events from the 1916 Easter Rising to the current and ongoing peace process, fully updated with a new afterword for the paperback edition.‘An essential book … closely-reasoned, formidably intelligent and utterly compelling … required reading across the political spectrum … important and riveting’ Roy Foster, The Times‘An outstanding new book on the IRA … a calm, rational but in the end de...

The previously untold story of the hidden politics that went on behind the scenes during the handling of the Royal abdication crisis of 1936.The King Who Had to Go describes the harsh realities of how the machinery of government responds when even the King steps out of line. It reveals the pitiless and insidious battles in Westminster and Whitehall that settled the fate of the King and Mrs Simpson. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had to fight against ministers and civil ser...

The Black Door explores the evolving relationship between successive British prime ministers and the intelligence agencies, from Asquith’s Secret Service Bureau to Cameron’s National Security Council.Intelligence can do a prime minister’s dirty work. For more than a century, secret wars have been waged directly from Number 10. They have staved off conflict, defeats and British decline through fancy footwork, often deceiving friend and foe alike. Yet as the...

What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands?With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its allies.Enemies Within is a new history of the influence of Moscow on Britain told through the stories of those who chose to spy for the Soviet Union. It also ...

The practice of terror in revolutionary Ireland remains a highly controversial topic, which seldom receives either balanced or dispassionate treatment. This collection of essays is designed to illuminate the varied origins, forms and consequences of terror, whether practised by republicans or forces of the Crown. It is the fifth production of the Trinity History Workshop, an informal group of academic historians, research students, and undergraduates associated with Trinity College, Dublin...

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 ...

'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...

Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was a supreme networker, with a contacts book that included everyone from statesmen to socialites, high-ranking government officials to the famous actors and literary figures of the day. He also set a gold standard for conflicts of interest, working variously, and often simultaneously, for the BBC, MI5, MI6, the War Office, the Ministry of Information and the KGB. Despite this, Burgess was never challenged or arrested by Britain's spy-catchers in a decade and a ha...

Great-grandson of a crofter and son-in-law of a Duke, Harold Macmillan (1894-1986) was both complex as a person and influential as a politican. Marked by terrible experiences in the trenches in the First World War and by his work as an MP during the Depression, he was a Tory rebel - an outspoken backbencher, opposing the economic policies of the 1930s and the appeasement policies of his own government.Churchill gave him responsibility during the Second World War with executive comm...