Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

A generation ago, such an encyclopedia as this could scarcely have been written, for in those days the secrecy of the British civil service, let alone the intelligence services, was compared to the omertà of the Mafia. I once asked a visiting lecturer (listed in the book) whether the Secret Intelligence Service really was called by that name or the alternative MI6? He replied that it had no official name because officially it did not exist (it would only be avowed in 1992). But a stream of inspired leaks and list‐and‐tell memoirs since the 1970s have allowed a more complete...