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| The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 |  | Author: Christopher Andrew
Publisher: Allen Lane
Category: Book
List Price: £30.00
Buy New: £11.99
as of 8/9/2010 02:59 CST details
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New (28) Used (18) Collectible (2) from £9.99
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Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 7,894
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 1032
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.8
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 2.7
ISBN: 0713998857
EAN: 9780713998856
Publication Date: October 5, 2009
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Product Description
To mark the centenary of its foundation, the British Security Service, MI5, has opened its archives to an independent historian. This book reveals the precise role of the Service in twentieth-century British history, from its foundation by Captain Kell of the British Army in October 1909 onwards. It also describes the distinctive ethos of MI5.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 36
 Shhh, you know who... August 23, 2010
Ian Millard
Professor Andrew has made a niche for himself following in what previously had been the footsteps preserves of journalists and others wanting to make money by writing about "Intelligence and Security" (the two best known being, probably, Chapman Pincher and the very ex-MP Rupert Allason/Nigel West). Andrew has turned this genre into a kind of semi-respectable academic subject of sorts and pops up as Secret State-approved "expert" whenever there is a spy story in the mass media. I have to admit to instinctive bias: I cannot stand the man's smirking smugness and I would like to know his origins. He seems un-English, certainly (possibly Jew?). Wikipedia is unenlightening, in any case, in relation to these facts.
The spy Cairncross tells a revealing anecdote about andrew's own attempts to get material about of him, which tale is told in Cairncross's own memoirs.
There is little of real substance in the book that cannot be found elsewhere, though it has to be admitted that, because Andrew had access to the files (or some of them) of the Security Service, there is material here which is probably unavailable elsewhere.
It takes a leap of the imagination to realize that, before WW1, two men shared an office in London's Victoria Street. One was the sole officer and therefore "chief" of MI6/SIS, the other the head of MI5/Security Service. In today's post-1945 world architecture, where every banana republic has a plethora of "security and intelligence" departments, it is almost revelatory to realize anew that, at the high-water mark of Britain's world power, it managed to do without such people, though I do concede that Britain did have official, semi-official and amateur intelligence people here and there, not least in British India and on the North West Frontier with Afghanistan in particular. Plus ca change.
Andrew includes some quite telling statistical graphs. One shows that, in 2009, MI5 had about 3,500 personnel in all, the graph rising steeply and showing no sign of levelling off. That would be twic the number employed during the Second World War and almost three times the number on its books at the height of the Cold War, in the 1950's.
By no means everyone thinks that either MI5 or MI6 did a great job (however defined) in the 20th Century. Some former secret state personnel have let the cat out of the bag a bit (see Ferguson's book on Kronstadt, for example).
I was interested in what Andrew had to say about Lyalin, though he did not explain why it is that a KGB (Dept. V, aka Line S I think) officer was doing the sort of job normally done by GRU officers. I might add that there is little of interest about the GRU itself.
The book is quite nicely laid out and actually it is not a bad read (and does have some humour in it, which I enjoyed). I liked the story of how the miners' union leader Mick McGahey (1970's) was able too largely foil telephone taps simply by the expedient of talking in his in any case incomprehensible Scottish accent made worse by extremely heavy drinking (paid for out of NUM funds)!
I did not notice (may have missed it) any reference to MI5's use of a telephone tapping triggering system called Tinkerbell, which started to record when a key word was spoken. The words chosen during the minners' strike of the early 1980's were "Scargill", "union", "strike" etc. You get the idea. Swamped. What a crowd of clowns!
I have to say that for a book of at least notional historical importance (as authorized history) and not inexpensive, the binding is rather poor and not up to a decent standard, really.
Andrew, it has been claimed elsewhere, was once a so-called "talent-spotter" at Cambridge for MI5. Perhaps...and perhaps that is why he does not, to my mind, address properly the question of whether a tap on the shoulder at a few Oxbridge colleges is the right way to sift potential officers. I think not. The gene pool is far too small (and, in the derogatory sense, precious...). They were probably better when they always (pre-mid-1970's) recruited people with life experience and NOT straight from a university. This latter is a curse of modern-day Britain and applies also to politics and other fields. Bettaney might have been less naive and thus less likely to (ineffectually at that...does that not say something about MI5?) betray his office, had he more experience of "real life".
The Bettaney case also points up something else, the relatively low pay at MI5 (though I understand that the legal and other professional sections are pretty well paid). The book does not show it, but Bettaney's house, in a decrepit part of suburban Surrey, was a rundown terraced house. Is this where MI5 officers (the ones who, unlike Lady Manningham-Buller, have no inherited wealth) live? Poor.
Inh the end, on its premises, this book is a quite good read, which however, told me personally little that I did not know anyway, though it is not a bad overview of this history. One accepts that it is "authorized" i.e. but a step removed from public relations. It is well laid out in terms of chapter headings.
In the end, I always think "yes, they caught some spies and terrorists and watched over some subversives etc (yet missed for years obvious risks like Smith and Norwood), but the UK is being or has been largely destroyed not by spies and terrorists, nor even by Arthur Scargill and his few successors, but by the insidious effect of trash Americanized culture, by the creation of a mixed-race (and thus relatively history-less, cultureless, rootless...) population, by the abdication of the State and its takeover by commercial interests under people like Blair, Brown and "Scameron", etc. About all of that, an organization like MI5 can do little and could do little even, as with the Second Chief directorate of the KGB prior to 1989, even in a more obvious "police state" like the Soviet Union.
OK.
order before you need it August 14, 2010
anon (wales)
I purchased this for my Son's birthday and it arrived in time.(the day before)It was a book he wanted to read and was delighted with it. However,the spine of the book was damaged,and because it arrived the day before his birthday, I did not have time to send it back. A lesson to be learned here. Having said that, I have had many things from Amazon over the years which have arrived in perfect condition.
 Intriguing and heavy reading July 18, 2010
Dark Angel (UK)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Defence Of The Realm [The Realm referring to the UK]: The Authorized History Of MI5 is an interesting insight into the workings of one of Britains most secretive organisations The Security Service.
The first few chapters is about how the organisation was born out of an idea & necessity to safeguard the UK from within by one person; who with very little resources and people managed to effectively protect the UK from German Spies and other threats both in times of war and peace.
The book then focuses on era's including World War I & II, while also covering the workings of the Security Service during the Cold War and how the Security Service also handled the IRA. While the book focuses on specific events, Christopher Andrews also briefly covers how the Security Service had to change and evolve to keep up with modern times and even mentions when the Security Service first used UNIX; while also mentioning their advertising campaign during 2002 - 2003 which involved placing ads in newspapers like the Guardian while also using an recruitment agency (Barlet Scott Edgar Recruitment Solutions) to vet potential Intelligence Officers, Administrators etc.
The book ends with what the Security Service may face over the next one hundred years.
A Valuable Filling In Of Intelligence Aspects Of 20th Century Britian June 8, 2010
Clifford (Weymouth, Dorset, UK)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It would be naïve to expect a history of an intelligence operation to say everything that ought to be said, even when relating to a time frame for which the principal participants are no longer with us. As this book aims to include the very recent past, as well as relating to the philosophy, strategy and tactics of the British approach to security, it is important to bear this in mind when reading this weighty tome. What it has to say on the 100-year old origins of MI5 is probably close to what we would recognise as the truth, and even up to WWII the gentle mocking of many of the key figures suggests a reasonable degree of reliability. In the discussion of the early Cold War, however, which deals with the deeply entrenched Soviet spies, and the conspiracy theories that muddied the investigatory waters, we start to leave behind this relative certainty. It is nonetheless helpful to have such an authoritative review of the sequence of events relating to the Communist Party of Great Britain, the labour strife of the seventies, the break-up of Empire, and the emergence of Northern Irish terrorism. What is not mentioned, though, seems as indicative as what is mentioned, and this is where conspiracy theorists will feed. Thus, the relevant issue of relationships with other agencies is only sparsely treated. FBI gets some attention, but with little about the CIA; the South African BOSS attracts a mention, but there are no mentions of the Israeli MOSSAD. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the concluding remarks, summarising 'lessons to be learned' from the history. Much of the supporting evidence is reviewed in the main part of the book, but I felt that more could have been said. However, within the authoritarian constraints that also must be imagined, this is a valuable book, and an illuminating contribution to 20th Century British history.
Useful, but utterly conventional, account of MI5 May 7, 2010
William Podmore (London United Kingdom)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge University. His book covers the history of MI5 from its origins to 2010. It details MI5's activities against first Germany, then the Soviet Union, then Nazi Germany, then the Soviet Union again, then the Provisional IRA and now Al-Qaeda.
In 1914, the Liberal government tried to blame German spies for taking the country into war and told MI5 to find the evidence. But the people fomenting war in 1914 were not German spies but members of the Cabinet like Churchill, newspaper barons like Northcliffe, the War Office, the Navy League and the Tory Opposition.
When the war started, the government smeared the anti-war movement as pro-German and told MI5 to find the evidence. But, as Andrew writes, "No evidence of German funding for British pacifists and revolutionaries emerged from investigations by either MI5 or the Special Branch."
Andrew details how Samuel Hoare, Head of the British Military Mission in Italy, and an MI5 officer, paid Mussolini £100 a week in 1918, which helped Mussolini create his Fascist Party.
The British government constantly tried to attack the Soviet Union. In 1927, MI5 convinced itself that ARCOS [the All-Russian Cooperative Society] had copied a secret Signals Training manual, possession of which was an offence under the Official Secrets Act. So it sought and got Prime Minister Baldwin's permission to raid ARCOS to procure the evidence. But, as Andrew writes, "Neither the Signals Training manual nor any other major evidence of Soviet espionage was discovered."
The book, oddly, has nothing on the war in Spain (1936-39). What dirty secrets about British government and Bank of England aid to General Franco are they still hiding from us?
This book is all about the defence of the realm, keeping us safe from subversion. In 1972 the Security Services said subversive activities "threaten the safety or well being of the State and are intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means'.
But when a foreign power makes 80 per cent of our laws, and we are no longer firstly British citizens but citizens of that foreign power, perhaps that power has managed to `undermine ... Parliamentary democracy by political ... means'. The EU wants to decide our budget for us, but, as German MP Carsten Schneider said recently, if a Parliament gives up its budget powers, "this would be the end of parliamentary democracy as we have known it so far."
But Andrew doesn't even have an index entry for the EU. MI5 has been looking the wrong way.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 36
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