The Defence Of The Realm

'Sensationally good ... A riveting story, the real-life spooks and spies far more compelling than anything you will see on the screen ... history doesn't come more fascinating than this' Evening Standard For over 100 years, the agents of MI5 have defended Britain against enemy subversion. Their work has remained shrouded in secrecy - until now. This first-ever authorized account reveals the British Security Service as never before: its inner workings, its clandestine operations, its failures and its triumphs. 'Definitive and fascinating ... whether reporting on Hitler in the 1930s, the Double-Cross System of the second world war, Zionist terrorism, the atom spies, the Cambridge spies, the so-called Wilson plot or the 1988 shooting of the IRA bombers in Gibraltar, this book is essential reading' Alan Judd, Spectator 'The British Secret Service has opened its archives - and even 'insiders' may be in for a surprise ... magisterial ... extremely readable' Oleg Gordievsky, The Times 'Compelling ... a feast' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'A superb account ... He has captured every important detail of the Service ... unlikely to be surpassed for another 100 years' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph

To mark the centenary of its foundation, the British Security Service, MI5, has opened its archives for the first time to an independent historian. In The Defence of the Realm, Christopher Andrew reveals the precise role of the Security Service in 20th-century British history, from its founding by Captain Kell of the British Army in October 1909 through two world wars and up to and including its present roles in counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. Full of dry humour, this fascinating and thoroughly engaging book describes how MI5 has been managed, its relationship with the government, and where it has triumphed and where it has failed. Readers will also discover the identities of previously unknown enemies of Britain and the West, whose activities the Service has brought to light. Above all, they'll understand the distinctive ethos and place of this hitherto extremely secretive organization within the U.K.

For over 100 years, the agents of MI5 have defended Britain against enemy subversion. Their work has remained shrouded in secrecy—until now. This first-ever authorized account reveals the British Security Service as never before: its inner workings, its clandestine operations, its failures and its triumphs.

A contemporary and comprehensive analysis of national and supranational defence governance in an uncertain and increasingly dangerous world. This book will appeal to policymakers, analysts, graduate students and academics interested in defence economics, political economy, public economics and public policy.

This book, first published in 1980, is a close analysis of Britain’s defence policy in the latter years of the Cold War. It examines the factors that limited the choices available to the governments of the day, including technological advances, costs, changes in the balance of power, strategic thinking in both West and East, and the consequent implications for the development of forces and arms.

Centred on the murder of Pat Finucane, an explosive and important expose which charts the extent and consequence of the British state s involvement in Northern Ireland s dirty war, from the start of the Troubles and through the 1980s and 90s. "

During the Vietnam War, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACVSOG) was a highly-classified, U.S. joint-service organization that consisted of personnel from Army Special Forces, the Air Force, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance units, and the CIA. This secret organization was committed to action in Southeast Asia even before the major build-up of U.S. forces in 1965 and also fielded a division-sized element of South Vietnamese military personnel, indigenous Montagnards, ethnic Chinese Nungs, and Taiwanese pilots in its varied reconnaissance, naval, air, and agent operations. MACVSOG was without doubt the most unique U.S. unit to participate in the Vietnam War, since its operational mandate authorized its missions to take place “over the fence” in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, where most other American units were forbidden to go. During its nine-year existence it managed to participate in most of the significant operations and incidents of the conflict. MACVSOG was there during the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, during air operations over North Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, the secret bombing of and ground incursion into Cambodia, Operation Lam Son 719, the Green Beret murder case, the Easter Invasion, the Phoenix Program, and the Son Tay POW Raid. The story of this extraordinary unit has never before been told in full and comes as a timely blueprint for combined-arms, multi-national unconventional warfare in the post-9/11 age.Unlike previous works on the subject, Black Ops, Vietnam is a complete chronological history of the unit drawn from declassified documents, memoirs, and previous works on the subject, which tended to focus only on particular aspects of the unit’s operations.

Catholic Christianity was not only essential to the making of England but provides the best foundation -- intellectual, moral and social -- for the culture of and England remade.Aidan Nichols, a Dominican theologian and a pariotic Englishman, offers a renewed Catholicism as a form for the public life of society in its overall integrity. The result challenges comparison with William Temple's Christianity and the social order (1942) and T.S. Eliot's Notes towards a definition of culture (1948)... The remarkable thing about this book is how different Englsih culture looks once you have read it. -- Jonathan Clark, TLS 5509, p. 7