Tales of espionage

Revisiting the Great Wars and the Cold War

“James Bond and his creator Ian Fleming have much to answer for,” writes John Hughes-Wilson in The Puppet Masters , where he talks about the impact of spies on “forces behind world events”. Colonel Hughes-Wilson, one of Britain’s leading military historians, may have had some justifiable grievance with 007. Having served in British intelligence for more than three decades, he knew how intelligence is really gathered. It is “the straightforward, often mundane, office routine of collection, collation, interpretation, and evaluation, followed by a dissemination to decision makers with a need to know”, he says, not some “gritty testosterone-laden adventure story.” Colonel Hughes-Wilson elaborates this in his other works: Military Intelligence Blunders , On Intelligence , and The Secret State — all essential reading for those interested in the theory and practice of spying.

Most books about spying more or less fall into two categories: those about a particular conflict, and those about a particular spy. The latter is led in Western publishing, without doubt, by the ‘Cambridge Five’, the ring of men who turned out to be spies for the KGB during the World War and Cold War eras. Each of them has had reams written about them, the latest two of which are superb: Ben Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends, which contains an afterword by spy fiction master John le Carre, and Anthony Blunt: His Lives by Miranda Carter.

Closer home, two biographies stand out. Journalist Shrabani Basu’s

Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan is an unputdownable account of the incredible life of an unusual woman who was a radio operator for the Allies, and evaded the Gestapo for years before she was sent to Dachau, tortured and shot dead. Mihir Bose’s

The Indian Spy tells the equally fantastical story of ‘Silver’, the Hindu Pathan who helped Subhas Chandra Bose escape from India to Kabul and then beyond.

Most books about eras in spying, especially in the last century, focus on the Great Wars and the Cold War, and then the hunt for Nazis by Israeli intelligence. Peter Hopkirk’s

The Great Game is an obvious starting point. Many historical works deal with the great spies of the time, including William Stevenson’s A Man Called Intrepid, and Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved.

The list could go on, but the most interesting accounts may be the ones that spies carry to their grave. After all, it is not for nothing that some of the best spy fiction is written by former intelligence agents themselves.