MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909-1949

by Keith Jeffery

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Genres: History, Nonfiction, Espionage, Politics, Military Fiction, War, Military History

840 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2011

About the author

Keith Jeffery, MRIA was a Northern Irish historian specializing in modern British, British Imperial, and Irish history. He obtained his BA, MA, and PhD (1978) degrees from St. John's College, Cambridge, the latter under the supervision of John Andrew Gallagher, and was Professor of British history at Queen's University Belfast.

Reviews

[Terry Cornell · Rating 2 out of 5]

A really long, fairly monotonous read. The author was hired by MI6 to go through their archives and write an official history of the organization--at least the parts that could be made available to the general public. To paraphrase Mr. Jeffrey early on in the book--a large portion of intelligence work is tedious and boring. Writing reports, filing, etc. A large portion of the book reflects this. The book covers the time period just prior to World War I through the end of World War II and the beginning of the cold war. There are some interesting stories and tidbits mixed in--the reader just has to find them! Unless you're a die-hard researcher on the organization of the British Intelligence services I recommend some other source.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the beginning historian Keith Jeffery advises readers that The Secret History of MI6; 1909-1949 was directly commissioned by MI6. He was limited in time he could cover and in the records he could cite. He is only allowed to write about the first forty years of the agency, and could not refer to activities the agency felt to be still secret. A further limitation was that the archivists at MI 6 rarely considered it important to maintain documents where the inherit value of the document was for the later creation of an agency history. The result is frequently a history of inter and intra-agency politics and rarely more than a mention of specific secret operations. Much of the books addresses budgetary limits, and the on going problems finding and recruiting in theater directors down through their ‘Joes’, secret sources.

Taking this last point consider: the problem of recruiting wherein the interviewer cannot say much about the job, or scoring the raw product from unknown people with unknown motives seeking to compromise their country or employers.

From the beginning MI6 had to maintain its vision of its charter, fight for its share of a usually less than minimal budget and fight off encroachment from hungry agencies seeking subsume or subvert the MI 6 Mission.

MI6 saw itself as primarily a collector of information. Ideally this info would not be openly available, by for example reading newspapers, and would be vetted for probable accuracy but without analysis to the The Government, branches of the military and diplomatic corps. Diplomats were usually wary of being compromised by the mission of MI6 and usually fought their in country presence. Ultimately they were moved to the Passport office, whose income supplemented their own, but the near uniformity of this arrangement often compromised what was supposed to be secret agents.

Later when MI 5 was formed to organize and conduct secret operations, sabotage and the like, MI6 found themselves competing for the same pool of agents and stuffing reprisals from foreign governments disinterested in the bureaucratic division of Special Operations and the relatively passive collection of Special Intelligence.

If you are looking for lots of James Bond action, this will not be your book. Two particular areas I had hoped to find better discussed were:
The penetration and compromise of MI6 by Kim Philby and the rest of the so-called Cambridge 5 Russian moles. Philby’s name is mentioned with increasing despair, but the isolated referrals do not yield any consistent picture or analysis.
A particular Intelligence situation was later made famous in the several books and movies including: Operation Cicero (Book) and 5 Fingers (movie). The version of this story as I knew it was that Cicero was a German spy functioning in the home of the British Ambassador in Turkey, but that he was being played by British Intelligence. In the Jeffery book this tangled story is reduced to a single sentence and one that suggests that Cicero was a German intelligence victory.

The Secret History of MI6 is well written and a serious effort has been made to be academically neutral while being respectful to his hosts. Jeffery has no hesitation at noting how long it took for MI6 in house recruiting to abjure the Old Boy Network in favor of talent spotting. Jeffery can be a respectful tenant in the files of MI 6 but blunt were documents critical to a complete history are absent and occasionally sharp in criticizing individuals. At the end he discusses each of the heads of MI6 and his analysis seems complete and fair if constrained by space available.

In sum, The Secret History of MI6 is a bureaucratic history. The focus tends to be at high level decision making. We get inter-agency maneuvers and what specific words where used in executing these maneuvers. Field ops rarely get as much detail. The book has to be among the first to make a point of championing woman agent contributions and casualties.

The Secret history is more of a foundational, background book and likely is of the greatest interest for the serious reader. I found it a valuable addition to a long-time interest in this topic. It is best as a part of a much longer study, and perhaps better if used towards the beginning of a personal interest in things espionage.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an unsatisfying book. The author, an academic historian, was purportedly given unrestricted access to records through the second world war and used them primarily to reconstruct the changing administrative structure of the agency and its relations with other elements in the government. Important matters such as the Enigma machine and the Cambridge spies are only glancingly mentioned. Entertaining matters such Ian Fleming's James Bond figure are not explored--indeed, Fleming himself is given but one mention.

Still, though certainly not a fun book, it is a thorough one so far as it goes and a worthy, albeit dry, supplement to the myriad books written by outsiders about MI6.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very workmanlike account of the first four decades of the Secret Intelligence Service’s (or MI6) life. By virtue of it being an authorized account, which isn’t synonymous with biased nor most truthful, the author had open access to MI6’s vaults. Unfortunately, for the first 20 to 30 years of its existence, MI6 did not value its records as historical artifacts, so at times the author had to put together the facts from those cables, memos, manuals, and accounts that do survive. In this he is successful. While not a read that blows you away, you are left impressed with this organization, its leadership, its productivity, its ability to adapt, and its ability to survive.

From 1909, when MI6 was essentially a one-man shop tasked with coordinating the foreign intelligence responsibilities of the British army and navy, to 1949, when it was a globe-spanning, highly professional, civilian-led and focused and internally respected institution tasked with finding out that which diplomats could not, it underwent immense change. Never formally acknowledged during this period, its repeated reorganizations, bureaucratic fights, oversight challenges, and immense operational tasks all took place behind closed doors, in the shadows, or in confidential votes of Parliament. In a political system where everyday politicians at times have the ability to reach very far down the government’s organizational chart, it was for decades largely separated from politics. The three tireless, effective “C’s” of MI6 during this period operated most often with senior uniformed officers or high-ranking career diplomats and civil servants, and only when necessary with MPs. Its ability to survive the Whitehall battles largely rests in the ability of its most senior leaders to convince the real power brokers of its importance and singular capabilities. They more than anyone realized that for MI6 to survive it had to be valuable to its consumers and discreet to the requirements of the larger government.

Overseas, the author’s account largely rests on the clandestine activities of the case officers and the agents they managed. Much of the narrative obviously involves their activities during the two world wars, but it is not limited to that. Indeed, the challenges of operating during peacetime were immense, but usually for different reasons. During wartime, however, I was struck by how many descriptions of an agent’s work ended in, “but three months later he was caught by the Gestapo” or “he dropped off the map.” This reiterates one thing: spycraft is an arduous task, and for those at the very end of it, it is extremely dangerous. An effective network can vanish in a single moment, and require immense energy to reconstitute.

Overall, while repetitive, this account goes a long way in filling in knowledge gaps about British intelligence and reinforces that some issues of intelligence gathering are timeless, even as the techniques and governments change.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm mixed about this book. I enjoyed the fact that it was close look at politics and how it can effect governmental business, yet at times it was incredibly dry. This was particularly frustating because sometimes you wanted more of the sensational. Jeffery mentions a flight from the Nazis in Norway, in one line. But apparently the diary about it was gripping.

So it gets just one line? Makes no sense. I mean I can understand downplaying Flemming and Reilly, but really.

Yet parts of the book, like the different roles, how the politics influenced posting and so on, were interesting. The book really drags for the first 75 pages, picks up, drags again until WWII and then drags. But it is still an interesting read.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have skipped less of this shit if James Joyce had written it. What an unexpected trudge this was.

[T Harrington]

Dnf... I was kidding myself to think I would finish this before the library due date💀

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aw, shoot. I have to abandon this at the end of WWII, about 16%/133pgs in. It's very, very dry.

This is an official history-- the author had unfettered access to MI6's files from 1909 to 1949. Yet the history is remarkably hampered. The preface lets you know that: 1) the records are very spotty, 2) despite 60-100+ years, names and other details still cannot be released, and 3) MI6 during this time was only a gatherer of information- they did not perform analysis.

What this means is that the historian cannot make a compelling narrative out of the pieces. Instead we are left with just the pieces, the scraps of logistics and how the money flowed. The only time the story was even mildly interesting was when the author referred to other documents. Memoirs, diaries, and other sources where the names have already been revealed and motivations could be gleaned from the logistical pieces.

Sadly even these bits are not well blended into the overall story of War, major events and how Intelligence (with a capital I) affected their outcome.

I may come back to the WWII section for historical background if I go on a larger WWII kick, but I won't be reading this cover to cover on its own.

[Alex Nagler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went in to this hoping for more exploits like that in Ben Macintyer's "Operation Mincemeat", the amazingly true story of how a dead body tricked the Nazis and helped obscure the real location of Operation Husky (they planted evidence to suggest Greece, not Sicily, the real target). I did not get that. What I got instead was 700 pages of the politics associated with MI6 from 1909 to 1949, with some casework attached. I suppose I should have expected that from an official history.

[Osama Mousa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The pages of the book are many but very important to any researcher in this field

We want from 1950 to 2018 lol

[Peter Ellwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Keith Jeffery’s titanic book conjures up a lost world of spying - and a still-rampant one of bureaucracy and office intrigue. It is interesting to see how little human nature has changed over the last hundred years, but 750 pages represents a lot of effort to get to that simple insight!

I must sound a major health warning about the title - and the content - of the book. “The Secret History of MI6”, is really quite unfortunate, and misleading. The blurb on the cover declares that it’s a ”realistic picture of a splendid British institution”, and again, “a fascinating insight into a hidden world” and that’s all true, but it doesn’t really convey which world they’re talking about.

In many ways the original UK title of “MI6: the History of the Secret Intelligence Service” is more appropriate. I imagine it was changed in order to make it sound sexier to American readers, but the net result is completely misleading, and many of the reviewers on this site were doubtless disappointed because they were expecting an inside view of James Bond. The main thrust of the book is a painstaking and scholarly study of the management of intelligence gathering, not the intelligence itself.

A random extract from page 351 gives the flavour of what I mean:

“Menzies [head of SIS at that time] got the committee to agree that Cadogan [PUS at the Foreign Office] should put up a recommendation to the Foreign Secretary and ‘if necessary the Cabinet’, urging that intelligence should ‘always be given priority’ over special operations work.”

Obviously a single sentence isn’t necessarily typical of a 750 page book. But it does at least help convey the idea that its centre of gravity is the machinations at the top, with the nuts and bolts of intelligence work as the background: rather than vice versa.

As a result, the book is a very long way from Ian Fleming. It reads like a long series of office minutes between top Civil Service mandarins, fighting for budgets, clarifying strategic objectives, and seeking to oust each other in the quest for power and influence. As such, it’s a fascinating insight into the growth of a global intelligence structure. But James Bond it ain’t. If that is what you are looking for, then be warned that this book barely mentions what the field agents did – in any case, that’s probably still secret. If you’re after real-life action you could do worse than to try Fitzroy Maclean (“Eastern Approaches”).

My own career took place in a far less exotic organisation than MI6, but all the same, KJ’s quiet, deadpan delivery reminded me vividly of the exchanges that used to take place in my own place of work. The birth of the Secret Service was naturally driven by the imminence and then the reality of War, in 1914. So, as things swam into focus there were endless quibbles and downright fights over who was in charge and who did what. War Office? Admiralty? Foreign Office? Endless quibbling over budgets, worries about whether this or that chap was ‘the right stuff’, and remorseless ego-driven contests over who was in charge, who reported to whom. From my own peacetime experience I don’t suppose it’s changed all that much over the years either.

Humdrum tone notwithstanding, an atmospheric picture does at least begin to emerge from KJ’s prose too. Some of it is bland, for example the prosaic but critical work of watching trains to see what was being transported and where. But very occasionally he slips in a startling revelation, such as the fact that the best kind of invisible ink they could come up with in the early days was – semen (But it had to be fresh: one agent in particular thought he could take a short-cut and keep a store of the stuff in his Invisible Ink Bottle; but it tended to get a bit smelly. There are no words).

If most of the account is around budgets and who tried to outdo whom in the tussles to run secret intelligence, nonetheless the flavour of such work does seep out of the text. Even the names of the people actually involved convey a certain sense of a period drama ‘cloak and dagger’, the original spies prowling around in the shadows and swirling mists, like something straight out of Mata Hari or the pages of Joseph Conrad: A. H. A. Knox-Little, Biffy Dunderdale, Boyle Somerville, or come to that, the original head of the service himself, Commander Mansfield Cumming, who naturally came to sign himself as ‘C’. His people were even known as ‘Cummings’ scallywags’, and it’s somehow no surprise to learn that this man wore a monocle and described his work as “capital sport”. Well of course he did.

750 pages is an awful lot to convey these still-interesting insights. For the most part the book strikes me as a marvellous piece of scholarship and an utterly invaluable tool for future historians and other researchers on the subject. Five stars for that. But as an vehicle of insight for leisurely armchair idiots like me – well, it never intended to hit that mark, and unsurprisingly therefore: it misses it.

[John Fullerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary, spellbinding book and every bit as captivating as a thriller, only more so because it's based on the Secret Intelligence Service's surviving archives of the first 40 years of the Service's history from 1909 to the start of the Cold War in 1949, tracing the extraordinary people who ran it in the face of not only its foreign adversaries, but the predatory institutional politics of the War Office, the Admiralty and the Army and the rivalry of other agencies, such as the Special Operations Executive, to say nothing of the moles who did their best to betray its work.
The Foreign Office certainly protected the nascent SIS and its independence from the military's attempts to take it over, but even in war, senior diplomats were embarrassed by it, shunned it, refused its operatives diplomatic status and the use of audio communications and feared that its activities would compromise them in the eyes of the host country, casting an unpleasant shadow over UK missions and their reputation abroad - utterly failing - or unwilling to grasp - just how vital its work was to the county's survival.
It was then, as it is now, a human intelligence service - gathering secrets from people. And then, as is the case now, it was and is shaped by the demands made upon it - the Requirements - of other government departments. Run on a shoestring, always grossly underfunded, understaffed and perpetually harassed by demands for more of this and more of that, with high expectations that were all too often hopelessly unrealistic on the part of people who didn't understand the nature of the end product (or totally missed the significance of the material they did in fact receive).
Most interesting of all are the characters, from the tough, kindly and superhuman first 'C', Mansfield Cumming, to his successors Sinclair and Menzies, as well as the talented undercover officers, the brave, sometimes brilliant secretaries, and the agents - mostly foreigners - who died under torture, giving away nothing. Unsung heroes, almost all.
The Service was never perfect. Mistakes were made. Incompetence on a Johnsonian scale loomed at every step, but lessons were learned the hard way, and painful changes were made.
It's all the more extraordinary that this valuable and readable history has been made possible despite the destruction of so many SIS archives once their operational usefulness was deemed to be over, with no thought given at the time to the history of the Service - until very recently.
A final note to thriller writers, including myself: there's the raw material for scores of spy stories in this one volume, but no matter how hard we might try, there's nothing quite as enthralling as the unvarnished truth itself.

[Fern F · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's this moment, right at the beginning of Keith Jeffery's "The Secret History of the MI6," where he mentions that this is an MI6-approved book. Basically, to get access to what appear to be tens of thousands of inside comms, diaries, etc, Jeffery had to play nice with MI6. Which means, while there's A LOT (frankly too much) packed in here, it's fun to imagine what salacious stuff got vetoed by MI6. They do mention one MI6 director who, as a sign of camaraderie, liked to show "high class" pornography to other MI6 members... so maybe not too much.

With that out of the way, this book a behemoth. And if you, like me, bought this book for your dad after the first Daniel Craig James Bond movie came out hoping it would contain a fraction of the excitement of Casino Royale, then be prepared to be disappointed. Yes, there's the occasional mention of spying gone awry, having to evacuate on last notice, code-breaking. But for the most part this is a book about bureaucracy. How to set up MI6, how to not let the Army/Navy/other British government department, try to muscle their way into MI6 territory, how to keep afloat during the lean interwar years, how the obsession with Communism means MI6 was not paying as much attention to the rise of Nazism as they should have. It's like after watching Casino Royale, you get to meet all the poor folks who do all the information gathering and cleaning up for Bond. In a way, it's great: here's a reminder that spy work in probably 99.5% unglamorous office job with a filing cabinet that never closes completely. It's demystifying. On the other, it can be a slog, especially when its a whole chapter of back and forth about how to restructure MI6 after WWII.

Jeffery does put in a lot of information here and it's clear this book was a ridiculous amount of work. But, it's excruciatingly detailed. Which is wonderful for a MI6 aficionado. It's less so if you came for Bond-levels of capering.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a mixed reputation on this site. Some of it is deserved, but some of it comes from the book not being what people want it to be. To address the second point first, this book is a history of the first 40 years of the British Special Intelligence Service (SIS), from 1909 through 1949. The book covers that time period almost exclusively from the angle of the organization and administration of SIS. There are a handful of "cool spy stories," but almost all of the information here is about how SIS was organized and run, from its initial existence through the immediate years after World War 2. If you want cool spy stories, this is not the book you want.

To address the first point, the book is entirely too long. This is an official history, with the author being granted access to official SIS files for the years in question, and it certainly feels like the author dutifully transcribed everything he read. I'm confident that isn't actually the case, but even for someone like me who found the whole organization aspect of the book fascinating, there is simply too much material. The book cries out for a good editor to whack 1/3 of it away.

That all being noted, I like this book a lot, even though it is too long for its own good. If I could give a half star in my review I would, but the extreme length keeps it from getting a full four stars for me.

Bottom line, this book is for people who are keenly interested in the story of how a very important organization is stood up from nothing on a shoestring budget, and steered through major wars and budgetary crises. For people who want cool spy stories, this is not the book you want.

[Rhondda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read quite a lot about this subject and found this book quite fascinating. The style is very academic. The author had access to reams of papers from the official files so the amount of information that he would have needed to read would have been phenomenal. I would also suspect that some documentation might not have survived (been destroyed early on) as has happened in some areas relating to covert operations.
It is not meant to be a thriller and much of the work of espionage is not the exciting "James Bond" style. The author has detailed a lot about the politics and bureaucracy that surrounded the organisation and its work. Although it is renowned today, the funding and resourcing of MI6 in the early days was not readily forthcoming but had to be fought for. Infighting and rivalries/jealousies with other parts of the British Intelligence services did not help things progress either.
This is a serious historical piece of research. I would recommend it to readers who have an interest in the development of the covert services and their clandestine work.

[Austin Gisriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readers of this review might note that it took me two and a half years to finish this book. Indeed, I don't know when I would have picked it up again if not for the pandemic wiping out so much outside-the-home activity.

My problem with the book--and it is in part MY problem--is that the title and cover are deceiving. I was expecting a book along the lines of William Stevenson's A Man Called Intrepid, a book detailing actual intelligence operations that occurred during WW II. Jeffery's book, while well-written and tremendously well-researched, is a book about the history of the organization; of who filled what position and how the organization itself evolved. That's not very exciting, and by "not very," I mean not at all. I admit that I should have read further the actual subject of the book before I bought it; hence, three stars to keep the book's rating average somewhat afloat.

Therefore, if you are interested in the history of the MI6 organization/bureaucracy, then, you will definitely enjoy this book. If you are looking for a good non-fiction spy story, look elsewhere.

[Duncan Prior · Rating 3 out of 5]

The rhythm of this book goes something like - a series of interesting anecdotes of individual spy networks, reaction to global politics, senior government committee & limited reform, go to the next series of vignettes and repeat.
It is like a heavy well meaning claret from an established house - lots of body and self-assuredness but heavy tannins instead of fruitiness - but the new owner has stuck on a funky label which misleads you. So ignore the blurb on the cover except for the word "official" as that will tell you all you need to know.

What are the major conclusions we can draw from the subject matter? A spirit of make do and mend, significant difficulty in penetrating foreign societies, interesting insistence on distance from the government departments they fed and a quirky approach to recruitment.

[Ron Peters · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not paying close enough attention to which books I buy! This turned out to be an “official” history of MI6, the British foreign intelligence service. As such it has little to do with what one would be interested in (famous intelligence operations, deeds of derring-do, and the use of cutting-edge technology); rather, it is deeply concerned with dull stories of bureaucrats and budgets. Also, Jeffrey only covers the period up to the Cold War, since MI6 still considers everything from the last 75 years or so to be “top secret.” Of little real interest to anyone other than the top honchos whose lives are lovingly detailed herein.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

An authorised history of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Keith Jeffrey had access to archived files, never before revealed to historians or the public, making this a unique insight into one of the world's most secret organisations. Though there is no history more informed than this one, this also means that there cannot be more contemporary coverage of SIS operations.

Not as accessible as Christopher Andrew's history of MI5, and a weighty tome. This will be of interest to serious students of intelligence history, but perhaps less so to the casual enthusiast.

[Dan Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy but long and frankly rather dreary account of the early years of what is now MI6. The book has, for my taste, far too much on the endless tussles over structure / organisation vis-a-vis MI5 and other parts of the intelligence community. Likewise on the endless struggles for budget and the costs incurred. It's well written and should be read by those with an interest specifically in the period covered (1909 to 1949) and with a taste for detail. I would not recommend it for those looking for a background for understanding the role MI6 has played since.

[Luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually the first book I read this year. I will admit though that the book can be very tedious. However, the polisci major in me thrives in the extremely detailed mapping on the political actors that gave birth to MI6. I won't make any claims on the veracity of the narrative as I am in no position to question them, but this is still an enjoyable reading to me nonetheless.

P.S: it could be that I'm an extremely boring person and is the sort of person that can watch a paint dry, though.

[idreamofallthebooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

The biography was an incredibly detailed and thorough exploration of MI6’s formative years and the role that the service played in a number of significant world events in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Jeffery’s style and voice ensured that there was a balanced approach to how he explored MI6’s involvement, as well as an honest critique of their role when necessary. Quite a long read, with a number of dry elements at times, however, it was utterly fascinating nonetheless.

[Martin Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an official history, not a spy thriller. The author had access to MI6 archives which provided some fascinating accounts of the bureaucratic battles the agency fought, but had many gaps in the actual intelligence collected. A word count in the Kindle edition showed that the word"budget" is nearly as frequent as there word"spy".

[Joseph · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had started this book in late March and just never got around to reading it till now. The book had good continuity, but was very dry reading. I expected the book to detail Ian Fleming's exploits during WW2. No such luck. A book that fills a gap in British military history perhaps, but not a book I would advise my friends to read.

[Charlie Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brilliant book about a fascinating organisation , its one heck of a read , the only reason for the 3 stars is because its quite academic in its writing style that slows the book down an awful lot , if like me you find the secret service intresting , you will enjoy it but prepare for a war and peace type slog

[Chrissy · Rating 1 out of 5]

90% of this was irrelevant. It made me want to rewrite and restructure it. It's hard to tell what the brief for this book was. Who exactly was the target audience? Who really cares what color pens they use for their inventories?

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

How could this not have been gripping? Espionage books are so good, and this is written (obviously) from the British point of view. I didn’t know many of the characters, but would come across tangential connections with Intrepid, which I have read.
Quite a fun read.

[Vince C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What a fantastic book! I consider myself an espionage nerd, and I learned a lot with this one. Very well researched. As they sometimes say… there was almost too much information. This one goes into my personal very selective library.

[Bud Chapman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interested in early MI6 history, this is the book for you.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bit of a slog.