A Hundred Years of Spying

A Hundred Years of Spying

Author: Phil Carradice

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2021-08-04

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1526781425

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Early espionage organisations like Walsingham’s Elizabethan spy network were private enterprises, tasked with keeping the Tudor Queen and her government safe. Formal use of spies and counter spies only really began in the years after 1909, when the official British secret service was founded. Britain became the first major proponent of secret information gathering and other nations quickly followed. The outbreak of war in 1914 saw a sudden and dramatic increase in the use of spies as the military quickly began to realise the value of covert intelligence. Spying ‘came of age’ during the war on the Western Front and that value only increased in the run up to the Second World War, when the threat of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany began to make themselves felt. The Cold War years, with the use of moles, defectors and double agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain saw the art of spying assume record proportions. The passing on of atom secrets, the truth about Russian missiles on Cuba, it was the age of the double agent, the activities of whom managed to keep away the looming threat of nuclear war. A Hundred Years of Spying takes the reader through the murky world of espionage as it develops over the course of the twentieth century, where the lines of truth and reality blur, and where many real-life spies have always been accompanied, maybe even proceeded, by a plethora of spy literature. This book will look at the use of and development of spying as an accepted military practice. It will focus on individuals from Belgians like Gabrielle Petite to the infamous Mata Hari, from people like Reilly Ace of Spies to the British traitors such as Philby, Burgess and McClean. The activities of American atom spies like the Rosenbergs will also be covered as will Russian double agent Oleg Penkovsky and many others.


A Hundred Years of Spying

A Hundred Years of Spying

Author: Phil Carradice

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2021-08-30

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781526781413

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Early espionage organisations like Walsingham's Elizabethan spy network were private enterprises, tasked with keeping the Tudor Queen and her government safe. Formal use of spies and counter spies only really began in the years after 1909, when the official British secret service was founded. Britain became the first major proponent of secret information gathering and other nations quickly followed. The outbreak of war in 1914 saw a sudden and dramatic increase in the use of spies as the military quickly began to realise the value of covert intelligence. Spying 'came of age' during the war on the Western Front and that value only increased in the run up to the Second World War, when the threat of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany began to make themselves felt. The Cold War years, with the use of moles, defectors and double agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain saw the art of spying assume record proportions. The passing on of atom secrets, the truth about Russian missiles on Cuba, it was the age of the double agent, the activities of whom managed to keep away the looming threat of nuclear war. A Hundred Years of Spying takes the reader through the murky world of espionage as it develops over the course of the twentieth century, where the lines of truth and reality blur, and where many real-life spies have always been accompanied, maybe even proceeded, by a plethora of spy literature. This book will look at the use of and development of spying as an accepted military practice. It will focus on individuals from Belgians like Gabrielle Petite to the infamous Mata Hari, from people like Reilly Ace of Spies to the British traitors such as Philby, Burgess and McClean. The activities of American atom spies like the Rosenbergs will also be covered as will Russian double agent Oleg Penkovsky and many others.


Liar & Spy

Liar & Spy

Author: Rebecca Stead

Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books

Published: 2012-08-07

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0375899537

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The instant New York Times bestseller from the author of the Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me: a story about spies, games, and friendship. The first day Georges (the S is silent) moves into a new Brooklyn apartment, he sees a sign taped to a door in the basement: SPY CLUB MEETING—TODAY! That’s how he meets his twelve-year-old neigh­bor Safer. He and Georges quickly become allies—and fellow spies. Their assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer’s requests become more and more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: how far is too far to go for your only friend? “Will touch the hearts of kids and adults alike.” —NPR Winner of the Guardian Prize for Children’s Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more!


Inside British Intelligence

Inside British Intelligence

Author: Gordon Thomas

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9781906779108

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100 years old in August 2009, this is a complete and up-to-date account of the two oldest and still the most powerful, secretive intelligence services in the world: MI5, the security service, and MI6, the secret intelligence service. This is a story of spectacular triumphs, treachery, their frigid relationship, their untold work with the CIA, Mossad and the spy services of Europe and their part in the fight against terror. It is also the story of two agencies led by men who are enigmatic, eccentric and controversial and who ruthlessly control their spies. From the unique partnership between Mossad and MI6, how MI5 and MI6 became a breeding ground for Soviet spies post-war, their exploitation of the collapse of the Soviet Union and their role in biological warfare, and including how both services monitor the spies of every nation based in London, it reads like fiction. But it's not. Based on prodigious research and interviews with significant players Inside British Intelligence is packed with new and startling information. Gordon Thomas is a bestselling author of 40 books published worldwide, a number dealing with the intelligence world, including Gideon's Spies and Secrets and Lies (both JR Books). His awards include the Citizens Commission for Human Rights Lifetime Achievement Award for Investigative Journalism, the Mark Twain Society Award for Reporting Excellence, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Investigation. He lives in Ireland.


Spying on the South

Spying on the South

Author: Tony Horwitz

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-05-12

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 1101980303

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The New York Times-bestselling final book by the beloved, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Tony Horwitz. With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure on the trail of America's greatest landscape architect. In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey, as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times. For the Connecticut Yankee, pen name "Yeoman," the South was alien, often hostile territory. Yet Olmsted traveled for 14 months, by horseback, steamboat, and stagecoach, seeking dialogue and common ground. His vivid dispatches about the lives and beliefs of Southerners were revelatory for readers of his day, and Yeoman's remarkable trek also reshaped the American landscape, as Olmsted sought to reform his own society by creating democratic spaces for the uplift of all. The result: Central Park and Olmsted's career as America's first and foremost landscape architect. Tony Horwitz rediscovers Yeoman Olmsted amidst the discord and polarization of our own time. Is America still one country? In search of answers, and his own adventures, Horwitz follows Olmsted's tracks and often his mode of transport (including muleback): through Appalachia, down the Mississippi River, into bayou Louisiana, and across Texas to the contested Mexican borderland. Venturing far off beaten paths, Horwitz uncovers bracing vestiges and strange new mutations of the Cotton Kingdom. Horwitz's intrepid and often hilarious journey through an outsized American landscape is a masterpiece in the tradition of Great Plains, Bad Land, and the author's own classic, Confederates in the Attic.


Northern Spy

Northern Spy

Author: Flynn Berry

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 073522501X

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Reese’s Book Club Pick Instant New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Thriller of 2021 A Washington Post Top 10 Thriller or Mystery of 2021 “If you love a mystery, then you’ll devour [Northern Spy] . . . I loved this thrill ride of a book.” —Reese Witherspoon “A chilling, gorgeously written tale . . . Berry keeps the tension almost unbearably high.” —The New York Times Book Review The acclaimed author of Under the Harrow and A Double Life returns with her most riveting novel to date: the story of two sisters who become entangled with the IRA A producer at the BBC and mother to a new baby, Tessa is at work in Belfast one day when the news of another raid comes on the air. The IRA may have gone underground in the two decades since the Good Friday Agreement, but they never really went away, and lately bomb threats, security checkpoints, and helicopters floating ominously over the city have become features of everyday life. As the news reporter requests the public's help in locating those responsible for the robbery, security footage reveals Tessa's sister, Marian, pulling a black ski mask over her face. The police believe Marian has joined the IRA, but Tessa is convinced she must have been abducted or coerced; the sisters have always opposed the violence enacted in the name of uniting Ireland. And besides, Marian is vacationing on the north coast. Tessa just spoke to her yesterday. When the truth about Marian comes to light, Tessa is faced with impossible choices that will test the limits of her ideals, the bonds of her family, her notions of right and wrong, and her identity as a sister and a mother. Walking an increasingly perilous road, she wants nothing more than to protect the one person she loves more fiercely than her sister: her infant son, Finn. Riveting, atmospheric, and exquisitely written, Northern Spy is at once a heart-pounding story of the contemporary IRA and a moving portrait of sister- and motherhood, and of life in a deeply divided society.


Washington's Spies

Washington's Spies

Author: Alexander Rose

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2014-03-25

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 055339259X

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Turn: Washington’s Spies, now an original series on AMC Based on remarkable new research, acclaimed historian Alexander Rose brings to life the true story of the spy ring that helped America win the Revolutionary War. For the first time, Rose takes us beyond the battlefront and deep into the shadowy underworld of double agents and triple crosses, covert operations and code breaking, and unmasks the courageous, flawed men who inhabited this wilderness of mirrors—including the spymaster at the heart of it all. In the summer of 1778, with the war poised to turn in his favor, General George Washington desperately needed to know where the British would strike next. To that end, he unleashed his secret weapon: an unlikely ring of spies in New York charged with discovering the enemy’s battle plans and military strategy. Washington’s small band included a young Quaker torn between political principle and family loyalty, a swashbuckling sailor addicted to the perils of espionage, a hard-drinking barkeep, a Yale-educated cavalryman and friend of the doomed Nathan Hale, and a peaceful, sickly farmer who begged Washington to let him retire but who always came through in the end. Personally guiding these imperfect everyday heroes was Washington himself. In an era when officers were gentlemen, and gentlemen didn’ t spy, he possessed an extraordinary talent for deception—and proved an adept spymaster. The men he mentored were dubbed the Culper Ring. The British secret service tried to hunt them down, but they escaped by the closest of shaves thanks to their ciphers, dead drops, and invisible ink. Rose’s thrilling narrative tells the unknown story of the Revolution–the murderous intelligence war, gunrunning and kidnapping, defectors and executioners—that has never appeared in the history books. But Washington’s Spies is also a spirited, touching account of friendship and trust, fear and betrayal, amid the dark and silent world of the spy.


The Greatest Spy Writers of the 20th Century

The Greatest Spy Writers of the 20th Century

Author: Phil Carradice

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2023-08-30

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1399071890

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The spy novel has, over the past hundred years, become one of the most popular literary genres. The best exponents have become household names, as have their characters, heroes and villains alike. From Richard Hannay to James Bond and George Smiley, the spies and spy-hunters of fiction have developed from the printed page to grace the movie and television screens - with huge success. Uncovering the greatest or best spy writers of the Twentieth Century has not been easy. There are so many to choose from. Ultimately, however, the choice has come down to three highly significant and successful exponents of the art, writers who cannot be ignored but, more significantly, who were leaders, movers and shakers in the art of writing spy fiction. John Buchan was at the forefront, arguably the first in a long line of spy writers - and still one of the finest. Classic tales like The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle set the benchmark for everyone else to follow. Ian Fleming's creation of James Bond in books like Goldfinger and From Russia with Love took the spy novel to new heights of glamor and exotic settings. John le Carre's world of spies, double-dealing, betrayal and seedy backstreet assignations is the very antithesis of Fleming's Bond but its realism and stark reality took the art of spy fiction to a new level. Buchan, Fleming, Le Carre, arguably the greatest spy writers of the Twentieth Century. Do you agree? Read the book and make your own judgement. Whatever you decide, you will not be disappointed by the writing and the judgements.


Invisible Agents

Invisible Agents

Author: Nadine Akkerman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-06-10

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0192555847

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It would be easy for the modern reader to conclude that women had no place in the world of early modern espionage, with a few seventeenth-century women spies identified and then relegated to the footnotes of history. If even the espionage carried out by Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, during the turbulent decades of civil strife in Britain can escape the historiographer's gaze, then how many more like her lurk in the archives? Nadine Akkerman's search for an answer to this question has led to the writing of Invisible Agents, the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies, demonstrating that the allegedly-male world of the spy was more than merely infiltrated by women. This compelling and ground-breaking contribution to the history of espionage details a series of case studies in which women -- from playwright to postmistress, from lady-in-waiting to laundry woman -- acted as spies, sourcing and passing on confidential information on account of political and religious convictions or to obtain money or power. The struggle of the She-Intelligencers to construct credibility in their own time is mirrored in their invisibility in modern historiography. Akkerman has immersed herself in archives, libraries, and private collections, transcribing hundreds of letters, breaking cipher codes and their keys, studying invisible inks, and interpreting riddles, acting as a modern-day Spymistress to unearth plots and conspiracies that have long remained hidden by history.