The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5

Professor Christopher Andrew has written an official history with style and authority and as with Professor Keith Jeffery's history of MI6, The United Kingdom's sister foreign intelligence service, the approach is as critical as it is expository. This work will remain an invaluable benchmark and reference for the history of British intelligence in the 20th century. The Security Service (MI5) should be given credit for recognising that historical analysis and narrative requires a view and understanding of the operations of covert government bodies in terms of home and foreign policy. Professor Andrew's evaluation of the damage of the Cambridge spy ring, lovingly christened 'The Magnificent Five' by their Soviet spymasters is chilling and captivating. You feel nauseated when learning how Anthony Blunt charmed his MI5 colleagues at their Second World War H/Q in St James's Street Mayfair, while systematically sacking the service of its crown jewels. While the MI5 secretaries adored him as some kind of Trevor Howard film star, he was filching out of the office over 1,700 documents to give to his NKVD case officer in the twilight of London's war-time gloom. But there was the curious irony that at the time the paranoid Soviet intelligence establishment thought the incontinent flow of secrets was too good to be true and that Blunt, Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Cairncross was playing double-cross. The greatest irony perhaps is that Sir Roger Hollis was onto Blunt; only to be personally tarred later in the maelstrom of paranoid suspicion about more Soviet moles, while Blunt enjoyed the privilege and glory of being Keeper of the Queen's pictures and an immunity cover-up lasting until 1979. There is so much writing and information in this 1,032 page volume that it needs to be read in bite-size chunks. But it is full of evocative and intriguing photographs and illustrations. The academic referencing and notation supports the accuracy of the sourcing rather than getting in the way of enjoying the book as historical literature. ***** In the light of the scandal about fake, malicious and manipulated reviews on Amazon, I am happy to declare that I have had no contact whatsoever with the author. He is certainly a researcher and writer I admire. I purchased the copy of the book reviewed here.

MI5 is responsible for protecting the United Kingdom against threats to national security, with October 2009 marking its centenary. Until recently it was - logically - clandestine. It now seems to have embarked on a charm offensive with its' doors permanently thrown open. How would Sir Humphrey Appleby - Yes Prime Minister - deal with this? On what basis would he sanction this book "while we cannot be told what we should not know, in the fullness of time at the appropriate junction, proportionate access to the available records will be rigorously considered". In one episode Appleby had to deal with M15, a former head had been a Russian spy discovering that "one of us" was "one of them!" We all have wondered how much was fact, what was fiction? This book will not tell you, it is a serious study not an expose, its contents selective and well ordered. It requires stamina, a heavy book (by weight and content), 1,000 pages and with it's stern black dustcover not unlike an official government report. It claims to be the first time any of the worlds leading intelligence or security services has "opened its archives to an independent historian." The author is a Cambridge academic and his role as an independent and objective historian made much off. But as it says in the subtitle, this is the "authorised biography" of MI5. I have read many books on intelligence agencies, these have been mostly dismal, much of what they do is mundane, bureaucratic, pointless, expensive, like little dogs chasing their tales it is an incestuous world spies spying on spies. Try Peter Wright "Spycatcher," far from inspirational. What Professor Andrew presents is a strategic, a political overview of MI5 rather than a description of tactical / operational methods. His approach, and he writes well, is absorbing but deferential. The book is organised in six chronological sections (listed as A-F) each with its own introduction (a committee at work here?). The bulk - 2/3rds - chronicles the organisational emergence, First and Second World War and operations before the 1970s. Here are some great successes crucial in defeating Hitler, perhaps their finest hour. This is an excellent reference for historians but not unfamiliar material or particularly insightful. This is a big book but a bigger subject, so Philby, Burgess, MacClean, Blunt and Cairncross get just 20 pages (Section D, Chapter 6). The last third deals with the late Cold War to the present and will appeal those interested in contemporary politics. Here we have the enemy within (spoilt for choice but communists, Labour Party, trade unions and the double agents inside M15 itself). There are no answers to conspiracy theories; the favourite being Harold Wilson but nothing was revealed (D11 or E4). And in passing Roger Hollis was not "one of them." As Robert Armstrong might have said, is someone being "economical with the truth?" Intelligence operations are ragged, even as far back as the Zinoviev letter which "may" have brought down the Labour government in 1924 (B1) there is no definitive answers provided here. Reading this book you have to think on what basis you assess MI5. In espionage and intelligence gathering failure is often apparent and well publicised while success is kept in the shade. MI5 stops people doing bad things but that's difficult to quantify. For example Andrew deals with the IRA bombing of the City of London, that further major explosions were thwarted but the details are not, cannot be, explained. This book gives the impression that MI5 has been for most of its existence barely adequate, passive and reactive. But that's how I like my security services, certainly if the alternative is the ruthless secret police that the Germans and Soviets, at times the FBI, created. Most of us will not have the depth of knowledge to adequately critique this book and if so you'd need plus 5,000 words to do it. Errors and omission accepted, from the perspective of an enthusiastic reader I found this to be fascinating in parts. For me the central issue is the balance MI5 has taken between defending the state and subverting it, and the shades of grey in-between. Each reader will find enough here to support their own prejudices and that is my recommendation for reading this book (well from page 503 onwards). Now all security agencies have found terrorism, coincidentally just as counter espionage and the KGB etc appear to have withered (be patient). While a creative opportunity to bloat their budgets and for M15 to present themselves as the new caring profession we should retain a very high level of scepticism. All these agencies are civil service bureaucracies, self-serving and at war with each other. I 'd be surprised if many read this tidy book from cover to cover but that's not a criticism. There is a lot of good history and interesting narrative. And it does no harm to keep an eye on the praetorians, which you can now do via their web site!

After a couple of chapters I can see that this book is well written and erudite. It's 1100 pages it going to take a long time to read but I am going to finish it. It's not a spy story but a history book. The author, to be given so much access must have been thought to be "on side" but he hasn't written a hagiography. For example, to get this review started I dipped in to see if it had anything to say about the Cambridge spies. It did. It seems that the establishment was so focused towards Germany that is was unable to look elsewhere, the information giving all the clues (including their membership of a Communist society at Cambridge) just wasn't even noticed. Which seems to explain why there were several junior officials that were also spying for the Soviets. The problem was compounded by a document security marking system wasn't much cop. The book reports the general weakness of this aspect of the service up to 1971 until there was a mass expulsion of Soviet Embassy staff. The author also discusses how the hardest challenge was to get clearance to publish information that affected other government departments - I'd love to know who he was talking about when he wrote "One significant excision as a result of these requirements [relating to the Wilson years] is, I believe, hard to justify" - which translated into English would probably be unprintable. He hasn't taken it lying down, as he then calls upon the relevant Government committee to (in effect) allow him to print a corrigendum. There's a lot there up to and including a discussion of the terrorism attacks in London and Glasgow. I'm looking forward to finishing reading an extra dimension informing 20th century history.

Good value for money, I have paid more for a buckle alone in the past. I like the flexibility of sizing the velcro fastening provides.

If you have ever read any of the Chapman Pincher books on this subject you will be disappointed in this sanitized version of events. Worth a read for the IRA/ Al Quaeda anti-terrorist policy and WW2 intelligence operations. It utterly refutes the claim that Sir Roger Hollis eas a llong time GRU agent so no more revelations there. To be read with a certain amount of skepticism.

A thorough, critical examination of the successes and failures of MI5’s first 100 years. Quite rightly, for a Secret Service, some cases remain Top Secret, but the vast majority of the work of this Government Office is revealed. It applauds the achievements and reflects on the errors. Throughout the book the spirit of the women and men in MI5, who have toiled long hours to keep us all safer, shines through. It is a long book as it covers a most tumultuous century in which the Secret Service has always been right at the elbow of Power. It is a very worthwhile completing as it brings the Service’s role in the last 100 years of British public life in to the open.

This book has been produced to mark the first hundred years of MI5, the service charged with the responsible of protecting the UK against threats to national security. The fact that a `secret' service has chosen to publish its history (said to be a first) is itself worthy of note and is a measure of the new openness of MI5 - it even has a website now - although sceptics might note that the security service is increasingly having to justify its existence and, more importantly, its budget. The book is a weighty volume (over 1000 pages), which is not surprising as we are told that the security service has over 400,000 paper files. The author, Professor Andrew, a Cambridge academic specialising in intelligence matters, has had the daunting task of distilling this vast mass of information down to a readable form and has successfully produced a serious study of an intrinsically interesting topic. Although his style is somewhat deferential, he is understandably keen to assert his independence and states that all the judgements in the book are his own, has had `virtually unrestricted access' to 20th century and earlier files and a limited number of files from the 21st century. Nevertheless, this is an `authorized' history and has been through a protracted process to obtain clearance. The author strongly hints that in some cases this has resulted in the removal of significant information, for example in the case of the alleged plot to oust Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. There may of course be for good security reasons for this, but we will probably never know and inevitably this will provide fuel for conspiracy theorists. The book is divided into six sections, A, B etc, rather like an official report. The origins of the Security Service arose from the needs of the military up to and during World War I, the period covered by Section A, which concentrates largely on the traditional spies of fiction. Section B deals with the period between the wars and the new feature of the `Red Menace' - the influence of communist and their sympathisers in British institutions. With the start of World War II, the emphasis was on counter-espionage and Section C contains a detailed account of the successful interception and decoding of German signals that largely nullified enemy activity in this area. After the war the service became preoccupied with the problem of soviet penetration, particularly within its own ranks, and there were even allegations (later found to be untrue, or at least unproved) against a Director General (Sir Roger Hollis) and a Deputy DG. But penetration did of course occur and the hunt for the `Magnificent Five' (Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean and Cairncross) absorbed much time and effort over 20 years and was not finally resolved until the naming of Blunt in 1974. This period is examined in considerable detail in Section D. In fact the period before the 1970s is covered in much more detail than later periods. In the later stages of the `cold war', counter-terrorism, for example opposing the activities of the various armed groups in Northern Ireland, started to assume a greater importance than `traditional' counter-espionage, and the service was involved in a mixture of these activities, together with internal communist subversion. This is the subject of Section E. Finally, in the 21st century, with the rise of Islamic extremism, counter-terrorism has become the overwhelming activity of MI5 and in 2007-08 less than 4% of the security service budget was spent on counter-espionage. Together with the domestic factual history there is much interesting detail about the people involved, the procedures they employed, the activities of the service overseas, and the rivalry between MI5 and other security services, such as SIS. In the early days the service had the prejudices of the upper classes of the time and was very `in-bred'. It relied on personal recommendations for recruiting officers, many of whom were ex-military and most of whom listed `hunting' and `field sports' as their recreations. There was nothing so vulgar as advertising and of course no women were employed as officers. It took a long time for things to change. The DGs, normally promoted from within the service, have been a mixed bunch, some aloof, others eccentric and at least one hopelessly incompetent. The interest taken in security matters by Prime Ministers has also varied greatly, from the supportive Churchill to the somewhat paranoid Wilson, who maintained that MI5 was bugging his communications. Overall, has the security service succeeded in its aims? This is something an outsider cannot really judge. Certainly, there have been successes (neutering the German espionage efforts in World War II, for example) and one suspects that there have been more recent examples, the details of which have not been fully revealed. But at the same time, it is clear that much security service activity has been reactive (the London bombings came `out of the blue') and in earlier days simply pointless (recording the entire membership of the British Communist Party). At least the security service has never intruded on everyday life in the way that, for example, the Stasi did and, admittedly on their own evidence, the service has resisted pressure from politicians to provide evidence about people unless they were judged as a danger to the state. This is the way it should be. Professor Andrew has produced a well-written history that I thoroughly recommend. But keep an open mind.

Fantastic. Read it. You don’t need to know anything else.