The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. Ian Fleming was the personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence at the time, and it seems to me almost inconceivable the item didn’t pass across his desk, because the co-incidence of writing about it in From Russia with Love is just too strong. It is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire of government intelligence that still resonates today.

A groundbreaking book, this unprecedented study is the authoritative account of the best-known intelligence organization in the world.SIGNED BY JOHN SCARLETT, Director General of the Director General of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Safely protected by living on an island, the British traditionally didn’t get much involved with the continent of Europe and remained in ‘splendid isolation’, secured by the Royal Navy, the greatest in the world. The turning point in Jeffery's story, the making of a secret service with a truly international range, was the Second World War.

After reading I look forward to finding more of his works that will continue the story into the 21st century.

Charles Thorougood is an agent of MI6 working in London during the Cold War, with a young Soviet assistant. Consider the case of Colonel Dudley Wrangel Clarke, an expert in strategic deception, using a role as a war correspondent for the Times as cover. Mansfield Cumming, far left, pictured in 1907, became the first head of MI6 upon its founding in 1909. A word count in the Kindle edition showed that the word"budget" is nearly as frequent as there word"spy".

The British secret service MI6 is violently opposed to the idea of assassinating the German leader, partly because he is a poor general whose plans will inevitably lead to Germany’s defeat but also because killing him will create a martyr around whom the German people will rally. It described a very secret department of government, which worked in a building which was to become an insane asylum for civil servants sent mad in the service of their country, which is a good read. A very interesting book that gives an excellent background to the British Secret Intelligence Service's early years. Polish-sourced reporting on German secret weapons began in 1941, and Operation Wildhorn enabled a British special operations flight to airlift a captured V-2 Rocket with the assistance of the Polish resistance.

Let’s move on to your next book, which is about an iconic time in the history of the British Secret Service. The next forty years saw MI6 taking an increasingly important-and, until now, largely hidden-role in shaping the history of Europe and the world. Alan Judd who served as a British army officer before joining MI6 has written a series of books about Charles Thoroughgood, a former army officer who like Judd himself ‒ his real name is Alan Petty ‒ then joined MI6. The authorized history of the world's oldest and most storied foreign intelligence service, drawing extensively on hitherto secret documents.

Casino Royale is the introduction to the Bond books which were truly brilliant and not to be missed. The grand dramas of the Cold War and after – the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 11 September 2001 attacks and the Iraq war – are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies whose stories form the centrepiece of the narrative. Its first director was Captain Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming, who often dropped the Smith in routine communication. This was a covert organisation based in New York City, headed by William Stephenson intended to investigate enemy activities, prevent sabotage against British interests in the Americas, and mobilise pro-British opinion in the Americas.

Dorril adeptly navigates the complex and often secretive nature of intelligence operations, drawing on a vast array of sources, including declassified documents, interviews, and historical records.