'His information is often so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services. His books are peppered with deliberate clues to potential front-page stories' (The Sunday Times)
MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909-45
The Secret intelligence Service was created in 1909 and this comprehensive account covers the organisation's history throughout both world wars, describing in hithero unpublished detail clandestine operation conducted under the direction of the first three Chiefs: Captain Mansfield Smith-Cumming, Admiral Hugh Sinclair and Colonel Stewart Menzies. The names of hundreds of intelligence officers and their agents are identified, together with previously undisclosed documents revealing the scale of the semi-transparent network of Passport Control Offices which stretched across the globe, enabling SIS personnel to conduct espionage.
'This extraordinary book does for MI6 what Mr West did for MI5, the internal security service, in a controversial history...In both of them the reader is presented with dozens, possibly hundreds of names of intelligence officers and agents, details of major intelligence operations with code-names and case histories, organizational charts and much mores besides'
Daily Telegraph, London
'Excellent and painstaking work...'
North Devon Journal Herald
'A must...'
The Irish Times
'Authentic history more vivid than most fiction'
Contemporary Review