W. Morrow, 1989. — 254 р. Written by an acknowledged expert in the intelligence field, Molehunt is an intriguing story of how MI5 tried to pinpoint the moles within the inner sanctum of British counterintelligence. 8 pages of photos.
Cottage Grove Editions, 2021. — 403 p. There is an enduring fascination with the secret history of the two world wars. This follow-up to Castaways of the Kriegsmarine examines the genesis of prisoner interrogation as an intelligence resource. We see how British naval intelligence officers were the first in the world to notice and exploit a loophole in the Hague Convention. We...
The History Press, 2022. — 208 p. In 1953, Ian Fleming's literary sensation James Bond emerged onto the world's stage. Nearly seven decades later, he has become a multi-billion-pound film franchise, now equipped with all the gizmos of the modern world. Yet Fleming's creation, who battled his way through the fourteen novels from 1953 to 1966, was a maverick – a man out of place....
De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022. — 387 p. This is the first biography in English of a World War II heroine of the Greek resistance, who joined the British secret intelligence services (SIS) shortly after the German occupation of Athens and was betrayed, arrested and executed one month before the Germans’ departure. She was a prosperous housewife with seven children, who had no...
Charles River Editors, 2018. — 90 p. The fighting in North Africa during World War II is commonly overlooked, aside from the famous battle at El Alamein that pitted the British under General Bernard Montgomery against the legendary “Desert Fox,” Erwin Rommel. But while the Second Battle of El Alamein would be the pivotal action in North Africa, the conflict in North Africa...
Milo Books, 2018. — 405 p. Drug War is a landmark modern history: the first ever full account of the United Kingdom’s fight against the illegal importation of drugs. Packed with remarkable revelations and thrilling anecdotes, it tells for the first time the story of the high-level traffickers who drugged Britain, and the secretive organisation that tried to stop them: the...
Greenhill Books, 2021. — 239 p. The World War II codebreaking station at Bletchley is well known and its activities documented in detail. Its decryption capabilities were vital to the war effort, significantly aiding Allied victory. But where did the messages being deciphered come from in the first place? This is the extraordinary untold story of the Y-Service, a secret even...
Charles River Editors, 2018. — 54 p. Europe’s attempts to appease Adolf Hitler, most notably at Munich in 1938, failed, as Nazi Germany swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia by 1939. Italy was on the march as well, invading Albania in April of 1939. The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1 of that year. Two days later,...
Harper Collins Canada, 2023. — 224 p. The thrilling true story of Agent A12, the earliest enemy of the Nazis, and the first spy to crack Hitler's deadliest secret code: the framework of the Final Solution. In public life, Dr. Winthrop Bell of Halifax was a Harvard philosophy professor and wealthy businessman. As MI6 secret agent A12, he evaded gunfire and shook off pursuers to...
Collins, 2005. — 648 p. Her Majesty’s Royal Marines have served their Sovereign and country with courage and distinction since 1664. From spearheading the recovery of the Falklands to supporting the efforts of the UN, the Corps is an essential component of the British Armed Forces, steeped in proud service and tradition. Between 1919 and 1997 the Corps experienced a period of...
Pen and Sword Military, 2022. — 217 р. The raid on St Nazaire has gone down in history as one of the most daring commando raids of all time. Given the code name of Operation Chariot, it took place in the early hours of Saturday, 28 March 1942, and was a joint undertaking by the Royal Navy and British Commando units. The port at St Nazaire, which sits on the Loire estuary and...
Pen and Sword Military, 2021. — 361 p. Sunset, 8 June 1982, East Falkland. Eight specially trained Royal Marines infiltrate Goat Ridge, a long rocky hilltop between Mount Harriet and Two Sisters which are occupied by a battalion of 600 Argentine infantry. The next day, from their hiding place just metres away from the enemy, they note and sketch the Argentine positions, then...
Columbia University Press, 2013. — 248 p. Long considered the masters of counterinsurgency, the British military encountered significant problems in Iraq and Afghanistan when confronted with insurgent violence. In their effort to apply the principles and doctrines of past campaigns, they failed to prevent Basra and Helmand from descending into lawlessness, criminality, and...
Silvertail Books, 2021. — 417 p. When Singapore fell to the Japanese in December 1941, Captain Freddie Spencer Chapman chose to take the fight to the enemy. Trekking deep behind enemy lines into the jungle, this veteran explorer turned special forces operative unleashed a one-man commando campaign of such destructive power and lethal ferocity that the Japanese deployed a...
Frontline Books, 2016. — 180 p. Throughout the fighting in North Africa in WWII, the Long Range Desert Group excelled in the role of special forces. Shaw served as an Intelligence Officer with this remarkable British unit, and in this classic account relates their daring exploits in special missions against Rommel's Afrika Korps. During the two-and-a-half years’ fighting in the...
Pickle Partners Publishing, 2016. — 192 p. The story of the British Intelligence Center in New York during World War II. With headquarters in New York at 630 Fifth Avenue, Room 3603, the organization known as the British Security Coordination, or B.S.C., was the keystone of the successful Anglo-American partnership in the field of secret intelligence, counterespionage and...
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023. — 224 p. On the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Peter Taylor tells for the first time the gripping story of Operation Chiffon, the top-secret intelligence operation that helped bring peace to Ireland. ‘A gripping exploration of how MI5 and MI6 worked for a ceasefire with the IRA – and how one meeting changed everything’ Telegraph 'An...
Amberley Publishing, 2017. — 172 p. Through a mix of objects, medals, photographs and documents held in the Military Intelligence Museum, the book tells the story of British military intelligence across the years, moving from its earliest object of the Waterloo medal awarded to the Duke of Wellington’s senior intelligence officer to items recovered from operations in...
Golden Springs Publishing, 2014. — 102 p. This paper examines the role of British intelligence operations during the American Revolutionary War as they apply to the British defeat at Yorktown. It begins with a brief history of British intelligence prior to the war, discusses strategic collection against the burgeoning French-American alliance, examines preconceptions during the...
Cerberus Publishers, 2003. — 340 p. This is the story of perhaps one of the British Armys least known regiments of World War Two The General Headquarters Liaison Regiment, code-named Phantom. Every commander in the field or at rear headquarters needs to have up to the minute information on the progress of the battle to enable him to plan his strategy. Communication, or lack...
Cornell University Press, 2019. — 336 p. Wagner crafts a superb story of espionage and clandestine policy-making, showing how the British pitted individual communities against each other at particular times, and why. Britain’s Wartime Policies: Perceptions of Jewish Power and Arab Conspiracy. Intelligence, Policy, and the Emerging Modern Middle East.
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020. — 279 р. A provocative, rigorously researched study that questions what we think we know about British intelligence. As John le Carré's fictional intelligence men admit, it was the case histories - constructed narratives serving shifting agendas - that shaped the British intelligence machine, rather than their personal experience of secret...
Edinburgh University Press, 2017. — 304 p. Reveals Britain’s secret counter-subversive policies and security measures implemented in the post-war Middle East. This book reveals, for the first time, a hitherto unexplored dimension of Britain’s engagement with the post-war Middle East: the counter-subversive policies and measures conducted by the British Intelligence and Security...
Helion and Company, 2016. — 137 p. Following the surrender of France in June 1940 Britain prepared to defend itself against a potential German invasion. In great secrecy a decision was taken to establish an elite bodyguard to protect the British Royal Family. Led initially by Major Jimmy Coats, a Coldstream Guards officer and celebrated winter sportsman, it was given the...
Helion and Company, 2014. — 331 p. Made up of members of the Coldstream and Scots Guards, British Yeomanry cavalry regiments, New Zealanders, South Africans, and Indian Army men, the Long Range Desert Group was perhaps the most effective of all the "special forces" established by the Allies during the Second World War. It was able to go thousands of miles into enemy territory,...
The History Press, 2011. — 491 p. This is the amazing true story of the real 'M', William Melville, MI5's founding father and the inspiration for Ian Flemings's character in "James Bond". Melville was one of the most influential counterespionage figures of the twentieth century. From a tiny outfit based in Victoria Street, London, the counterintelligence organisation that...
Pegasus Books, 2014. — 384 p. A "superb" portrait of the Tudor-age spymaster that "paints a John le Carre-like world of double-dealing and intrigue". Elizabeth I came to the throne at a time of insecurity and unrest. Rivals threatened her reign; England was a Protestant island, isolated in a sea of Catholic countries. Spain plotted an invasion, but Elizabeth's Secretary, Sir...
New York University Press, 2003. — 223 p. When the Germans invaded her small Belgian village in 1914, Marthe Cnockaert’s home was burned and her family separated. After getting a job at a German hospital, and winning the Iron Cross for her service to the Reich, she was approached by a neighbor and invited to become an intelligence agent for the British. Not without trepidation,...
Tattered Flag, 2015. — 295 p. The years 1909-1918 can be regarded as formative for MI5, an era in which it developed from a small counterespionage bureau into an established security intelligence agency. MI5 had two main roles during this period; counterespionage, and advising the War Office on how to deal with the police and the civilian population, particularly foreign...
Oneworld Publications, 2018. — 432 p. As one of al-Qaeda's most respected scholars and bomb-makers, Aimen Dean rubbed shoulders with the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden himself. His job was already one of the most dangerous in the world. But what the others didn't know was that he was working undercover for MI6. This is the story of a...
Pen and Sword Military, 2022. — 250 p. In recent years, the work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers has caught the public’s imagination with books and films. While men such as Alan Turing and Dilly Knox have been recognized, Brigadier John Tiltman has been hardly mentioned. This overdue biography reveals that ‘The Brig’, as he was known, played a key role. After distinguished...
Pen and Sword Books, 2016. — 248 p. "Gentlemen, we are going to capture Tobruk and destroy it."'Operation Agreement' started as a fairly simple plan to destroy Rommel's bomb-proof oil-storage tanks at Tobruk on the eve of Alamein. But, catching the imagination of GHQ, the plan snowballed alarmingly. As well as a commando unit led by the plan's originator, Colonel Haselden, it...
The History Press, 2009. — 208 p. Odette Brailly entered the nation's consciousness in the 1950s when her remarkable - and romantic - exploits as an SOE agent first came to light. She had been the first woman to be awarded the GC, as well as the Legion d'Honneur, and in 1950 the release of a film about her life made her the darling of the British popular press. But others...
Cloudshill Press, 2018. — 232 p. In July 1940, a desperately weakened Britain licks her wounds after the humiliating retreat from Dunkirk. How can the fight be taken to the enemy? New Prime Minister Winston Churchill orders the creation of the Special Operations Executive, to 'set Europe ablaze' through subversion and sabotage. But this most secret of agencies must be kept...
Cloudshill Press, 2020. — 298 p. It was Christmas 1942. Eleven young women braved the attentions of Nazi U-Boats in the deep Atlantic on their way to North Africa. About to play their part in defeating Hitler, they called themselves the First Eleven. According to Winston Churchill, the Mediterranean was the key to defeating the Third Reich. And a crucial part of undermining...
Hachette Headline, 2023. — 224 p. When the history of British codebreaking is told, the story is often a men-only preserve (for example, of the top fourteen listed actors in Bletchley Park-set The Imitation Game, only one is a woman). That perception completely ignores the fact that the vast majority of codebreakers were in fact women; and foremost among them was one who is...
Fonthill Media, 2014. — 224 p. The Royal Marines played an important part in freeing the world from Hitler’s regime, but it was not until 1942 that they became involved in forming Commando units as small raiding forces. Army Commandos were already in training following Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s demand for the formation of these specialist forces, and the Admiralty...
Viking, 1986. — 648 p. This is the first comprehensive study of the emergence of one of the world's major intelligence organizations-a vivacious, witty account with revelations in every chapter, by "the leading unofficial historian of British Intelligence". The vast expansion of British espionage during World War I led to important developments in the inter-war years, and Her...
Hachette UK, 2015. — 224 p. Established in June 1940, the Long Range Desert Group was the inspiration of scientist and soldier Major Ralph Bagnold, a contemporary of T.E Lawrence who, in the inter-war years, explored the North African desert in a Model T Ford automobile. Mortimer takes us from the founding of the LRDG, through their treacherous journey across the Egyptian Sand...
Yale University Press, 2020. — 320 p. A thrilling history of MI9-the WWII organisation that engineered the escape of Allied forces from behind enemy lines. When Allied fighters were trapped behind enemy lines, one branch of military intelligence helped them escape: MI9. The organisation set up clandestine routes that zig-zagged across Nazi-occupied Europe, enabling soldiers and...
Headline, 2014. — 400 p. Special Ops Heroes tells the extraordinary stories behind Lord Ashcroft's collection of SAS and other Special Forces medals - the largest of its kind in the world. The action-packed stories span some sixty years from the exploits of the newly-formed SAS early in the Second World War to the end of the twentieth century. It features several remarkable...
EQ Publishing, 2020. — 89 p. In 1949 Noor Inayat Khan was awarded the George Cross posthumously. How did this young lady from a noble upbringing with a pacifist belief have the desire, dedication and willingness to risk everything to become one of the bravest and courageous agents during World War II? Starting her career with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, Noor soon wanted to...
Pen and Sword History, 2021. — 257 p. The life story of Madge Addy, a working-class Manchester woman who volunteered to fight Fascism and Nazism in two major wars, is a truly remarkable one. Madge left her job and her husband to serve in the Spanish Civil War as a nurse with the Republican medical services. In Spain she was wounded in a bombing raid, fell in love with another...
Pen and Sword Military, 2017. — 192 p. On 1 April 1982 the Argentinian junta invaded the Falkland Islands, while the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment was on leave. Recalled to barracks, it joined the hastily assembled task force to recover the Islands. No parachutes – instead a journey of 8000 miles on a North Sea ferry to deliver the battalion into battle. Philip Neame...
Mirror Books, 2020. — 128 p. Two sisters, one war and an extraordinary family secret from 1939. In the nation's hour of need, brave sisters Patricia and Jean Owtram answered the call of duty. With their fierce intelligence and steely determination, these remarkable young women would stop at nothing to help crack the Enigma code, support Allied troops, and defeat the Nazis....
Leo Cooper, 2009. — 224 p. For most people, climbing a ladder to clear the gutters is a challenge. Jack Williams and his colleagues in the specialist signals unit supporting the SAS in Northern Ireland had to climb towers and maintain vital communications - often in full view and under fire from terrorists. This is the gripping insider story of the tension, fear and comradeship...
The History Press, 2020. — 224 p. Major Ronnie Reed was case officer for the infamous Agent Zigzag and the face behind Operation Mincemeat. But how did this young BBC radio operator, with no money and qualifications to speak of, reach such an important position in his twenties? Why did Agent Zigzag (Eddie Chapman) give Ronnie his Iron Cross, awarded to Zigzag by Hitler himself?...
Pen and Sword Military, 2023. — 255 p. The existence of German-speaking units fighting for the Allied cause during WW2 has remained largely a well-kept secret. But seventy-five years on these units’ contribution to victory needs to be fully acknowledged. Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no qualms about using native German speakers from Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and of...
Pen and Sword Books, 2009. — 192 p. Did you have a spy in the family, an ancestor who was involved in espionage at home or abroad? If you have ever had any suspicions about the secret activities of your relatives, or are curious about the long hidden history of Britain's secret services and those who served in them, this is the book for you. Phil Tomaselli's fascinating guide...
Pen and Sword Military, 2021. — 216 p. Second volume of a highly illustrated history of 2 SAS’s operations in 1944 in support of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France. In the world of military history there is no brand as potent as that of the SAS. They burst into global prominence in 1980 with their spectacular storming of the Iranian Embassy, and there have been...