Andrew - Defend the Realm The Authorized History of MI5

Magisterial, authoritative, balanced, readable. MI5 has been well-served by this history and so have future historians, Service staff and the public in general.

The Sunday Telegraph (London)

[This] book covers everything. It is a striking experiment in openness.

The Economist

A ripping read and just the kind of work one would hope for from a well-qualified academic who has been given the run of MI5s treasure trove of files.

The Guardian (London)

Definitive and fascinating. Definitive because, after decades of ill-informed or partial accounts this book fully defines and describes its subject; no future writer can ignore it. Fascinating because the fluent clarity of Andrews narrative, his eye for colourful individual detail and the sheer interest of his subjects. This book is essential reading for anyone with even the slightest interest in intelligence in the modern period.

The Spectator

Absolutely fascinating. A sweeping and highly readable account of a century of British intelligence.

The Washington Times

Andrew is an entertaining and authoritative guide through the labyrinth of secret files, with an infectious fascination for the game of counter-espionage. An important part of Andrews achievement is to narrate with clarity an incredibly complex story in which bizarre and improbable reality often outruns the most rococo fabrications of the spy novelist.

The Observer (London)

There are plenty of fresh details about celebrated events, behind-the-scenes tidbits about successes and foibles, and dish about infamous people. Its crack for history and spy agency addicts.

Gerald Posner, The Daily Beast

Throws new light on an important area of the running of the country, analysing the changing threats to national security over the one hundred years and discussing the appropriateness or otherwise of the services response. It will be enthusiastically scrutinised by historians, intelligence buffs and conspiracy theorists.

Stella Rimington, Financial Times

Brimming with some wonderful details. A valuable and important contribution to our understanding of the twentieth century.

The Independent (London)

CHRISTOPHER ANDREW
Defend the Realm

Christopher Andrew is Britains leading historian of intelligence, professor of modern and contemporary history and former chair of the faculty of history at Cambridge University. He is also chair of the British Intelligence Study Group, founding coeditor of Intelligence and National Security, former visiting professor at Harvard, the University of Toronto, and the Australian National University, and a regular presenter of BBC Radio and TV documentaries. His fifteen previous books include The Mitrokhin Archive, volumes 1 and 2, and a number of groundbreaking studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history.

MI5s self-image at the end of 1917 on a Christmas/New Year card designed by its deputy head, Eric Holt-Wilson, and drawn by the leading illustrator, Byam Shaw. MI5, in the guise of a masked Britannia, impales the loathsome figure of Subversion with her monogrammed trident before he can stab the British fighting man in the back and prevent him achieving Mankinds Immortal Victory MIV (MI5 in pseudo-roman form). (illustration credit )

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FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 2010

2009 Crown copyright

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain as The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 by Allen Lane, Penguin Books, Ltd., London, and subsequently published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2009.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Andrew, Christopher M.
Defend the realm: the authorized history of MI5 / by Christopher Andrew.
1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Great Britain. MI5History. 2. Intelligence serviceGreat BritainHistory. I. Title.
JN329.16A525 2009
327.1241dc22
2009025463

eISBN: 978-0-307-27291-1

Author photograph Michael Jones

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

Vernon Kell (Hulton Deutsch Collection/Orbis)

Major (later Brigadier General) James Edmonds (National Army Museum)

William Le Queux with his publisher (Frederic G. Hodsoll/National Portrait Gallery, London)

William Melville (By kind permission of Andrew Cook)

Gustav Steinhauer (in disguise) (Steinhauer, The Kaisers Master Spy: The Story as Told by Himself, John Lane/The Bodley Head Ltd, 1930)

Winston Churchill, Sidney Street Siege, 1911 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

William Hinchley Cooke in German military uniform (Service Archives)

MI9 Chemical Branch staff testing for secret writing (KV 1/73)

Carl Lody (Queer People by Basil Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1922)

Karl Mller (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Maldwyn Haldane with Registry staff, 1918 (Service Archives)

Vernon Kell with heads of branches, 1918 (Service Archives)

Staff celebrating the Armistice on the roof of Waterloo House, 1918 (Service Archives)

Letter from Vernon Kell to staff on Armistice Day (Service Archives)

Maxwell Knight (Norman Parkinson Archive)

Jane Archer, 1924 (family archives)

Percy Glading, 1942 ( Metropolitan Police Authority 2009)

Melita Norwood, 1938 (Service Archives)

Melita Norwood, 1999 (Tony Harris/PA Archive/Press Association Images)

Message to Melita Norwood from her wartime controller, 1999 (by kind permission of David Burke)

Christopher Draper with Adolf Hitler, 1932 (The Mad Major by Christopher Draper, Air Review Ltd, 1962)

Christopher Draper flying under Westminster Bridge (The Mad Major by Christopher Draper, Air Review Ltd, 1962)

Wolfgang zu Putlitzs passport in the name of William Putter, 1938 (Service Archives)

Jona Klop Ustinov, 1920 (Service Archives)

Dick White, c. 1939 (Service Archives)

Staff relaxing at Wormwood Scrubs, 1940 (Service Archives)

Wormwood Scrubs office, November 1939 (Mary Evans Picture Library/Illustrated London News)

Vernon Kell at Wormwood Scrubs, 1940 (Service Archives)

Folkert van Koutrik, c. 1940 (Service Archives)

Anthony Blunt in military uniform, 1940 (Service Archives)