Codename Intelligentsia

He was the son of a hereditary peer, one of the wealthiest men in Britain. His childhood was privileged; at Cambridge, he flourished. At the age of 21, he founded The Film Society, and became a pioneering standard-bearer for film as art. He was a collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock, rescuing The Lodger and later producing his ground-breaking British thrillers The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent and Sabotage. He directed comedies from stories by H.G. Wells, worked in Hollywood with Eisenstein, and made documentaries in Spain during the Civil War. He lobbied for Trotsky to be granted asylum in the UK, and became a leading propagandist for the anti-fascist and Communist cause. Under the nose of MI5, who kept him under constant surveillance, he became a secret agent of the Comintern and a Soviet spy. He was a man of high intelligence and moral concern, yet he was blind to the atrocities of the Stalin regime. This is the remarkable story of Ivor Montagu, and of the burgeoning cinematic culture and left-wing politics of Britain between the wars. It is a story of restless energy, generosity of spirit, creative achievement and intellectual corruption.

A vastly entertaining and unique history of the interaction between spying and showbiz, from the Elizabethan age to the Cold War and beyond. 'A treasure trove of human ingenuity' The Times Written by two experts in their fields, Stars and Spies is the first history of the extraordinary connections between the intelligence services and show business. We travel back to the golden age of theatre and intelligence in the reign of Elizabeth I. We meet the writers, actors and entertainers drawn into espionage in the Restoration, the Ancien Régime and Civil War America. And we witness the entry of spying into mainstream popular culture throughout the twentieth century and beyond - from the adventures of James Bond to the thrillers of John le Carré and long-running TV series such as The Americans. 'Thoroughly entertaining' Spectator 'Perfect...read as you settle into James Bond on Christmas afternoon.' Daily Telegraph

Looking-Glass Wars: Spies on British Screens since 1960 is a detailed historical and critical overview of espionage in British film and television in the important period since 1960. From that date, the British spy screen was transformed under the influence of the tremendous success of James Bond in the cinema (the spy thriller), and of the new-style spy writing of John le Carré and Len Deighton (the espionage story). In the 1960s, there developed a popular cycle of spy thrillers in the cinema and on television. The new study looks in detail at the cycle which in previous work has been largely neglected in favour of the James Bond films. The study also brings new attention to espionage on British television and popular secret agent series such as Spy Trap, Quiller and The Sandbaggers. It also gives attention to the more ‘realistic’ representation of spying in the film and television adaptations of le Carré and Deighton, and other dramas with a more serious intent. In addition, there is wholly original attention given to ‘nostalgic’ spy fictions on screen, adaptations of classic stories of espionage which were popular in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, and to ‘historical’ spy fiction, dramas which treated ‘real’ cases of espionage and their characters, most notably the notorious Cambridge Spies. Detailed attention is also given to the ‘secret state’ thriller, a cycle of paranoid screen dramas in the 1980s which portrayed the intelligence services in a conspiratorial light, best understood as a reaction to excessive official secrecy and anxieties about an unregulated security service. The study is brought up-to-date with an examination of screen espionage in Britain since the end of the Cold War. The approach is empirical and historical. The study examines the production and reception, literary and historical contexts of the films and dramas. It is the first detailed overview of the British spy screen in its crucial period since the 1960s and provides fresh attention to spy films, series and serials never previously considered.

If objectivity was the great discovery of the nineteenth century, uncertainty was the great discovery of the twentieth century.

Over the past fifty years, Nigel West has been involved in almost every espionage-related investigation, breakthrough or revelation that you can think of. His molehunts have led to the unmasking of spies within MI5, MI6 and the CIA and the identification of numerous others – some of whom were crucial to the Allied victory in the Second World War and would have died without any public recognition if not for him. His first encounter with the intelligence community was a lecture given at his school by John le Carré, the guest of a Benedictine monk who had recently retired from MI6. Later, West worked as a researcher for SOE agent Ronnie Seth, who was sentenced to death by the Nazis after being captured during Operation blunderhead, and exposed two of the Cambridge spies recruited by Anthony Blunt. For the fortieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, West traced the double agent codenamed garbo and brought him to London so he could be decorated at Buckingham Palace. As action-packed as the lives of the spies he has written about, this is the story of the most enthralling and significant post-war intelligence revelations as told by Britain's most authoritative writer on espionage and the secret services.

Herbert Ponting (1870-1935) was young bank clerk when he bought an early Kodak compact camera. By the early 1900s, he was living in California, working as a professional photographer, known for stereoview and enlarged images of America, Japan and the Russo-Japanese war. In 1909, back in Britain, Ponting was recruited by Captain Robert Scott as photographer and filmmaker for his second Antarctic expedition. In 1913, following the deaths of Scott and his South Pole party companions, Ponting's images of Antarctica were widely published, and he gave innovative 'cinema-lectures' on the expedition. When war broke out, Ponting's offers to serve as a photographer or correspondent were declined, but in 1918 he, Ernest Shackleton and other Antarctic veterans joined a government-backed Arctic expedition. During the economically depressed 1920s and 1930s, Ponting wrote his Antarctic memoir, re-worked his Antarctic films into silent and 'talkie' versions and worked on inventions. Like others, he struggled financially but was sustained by correspondence with photographic equipment magnate George Eastman, a late-life romance with singer Glae Carrodus and knowing that his images of Antarctica had secured his place in photographic and filmmaking history.

Hitchcock’s previously untold origin story. Alfred Hitchcock called The Lodger "the first true Hitchcock movie," the one that anticipated all the others. And yet the story of how The Lodger came to be made is shrouded in myth, often repeated and much embellished, even by Hitchcock himself. The First True Hitchcock focuses on the twelve-month period that encompassed The Lodger's production in 1926 and release in 1927, presenting a new picture of this pivotal year in Hitchcock's life and in the wider film world. Using fresh archival discoveries, Henry K. Miller situates Hitchcock's formation as a director against the backdrop of a continent shattered by war and confronted with the looming presence of a new superpower, the United States, and its most visible export—film. The previously untold story of The Lodger's making in the London fog—and attempted remaking in the Los Angeles sun—is the story of how Hitchcock became Hitchcock.

John Cairncross was among the most damaging spies of the twentieth century. A member of the infamous Cambridge Ring of Five, he leaked highly sensitive documents from Bletchley Park, MI6 and the Treasury to the Soviet Union – including the first atomic secrets and raw decrypts from Enigma and Tunny that influenced the outcome of the Battle of Kursk. In 2014, Cairncross appeared as a secondary, though key, character in the biopic of Alan Turing's life, The Imitation Game. While the other members of the Cambridge Ring of Five have been the subject of extensive biographical study, Cairncross has largely been overlooked by both academic and popular writers. Despite clear interest, he has remained a mystery – until now. The Last Cambridge Spy is the first ever biography of John Cairncross, using newly released material to tell the story of his life and espionage.