MI6, Gordon Corera
MI6, Gordon Corera
46 Rating(s)
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
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MI6
Life and Death in the British Secret Service

Author: Gordon Corera

Narrator: Gordon Corera

Unabridged: 15 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/25/2021

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

From the host of The Rest is Classified podcast, this is the secret history of MI6 - from the Cold War to the present day.

The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created over a century ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carré. In MI6, security expert Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.

It tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of the Second World War, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue, the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with working for British intelligence.

The grand dramas of the Cold War and its aftershocks - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 9/11 and the Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies at the centre of the narrative. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to their sworn enemies. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the truth is often more remarkable than the fiction.

About Gordon Corera

Gordon Corera is a journalist and writer on intelligence and security issues. Since 2004 he has been a Security Correspondent for BBC News where he covers terrorism, cyber security, the work of intelligence agencies and other national security issues for BBC TV, Radio and Online. He has reported from across the United States, Asia, Africa and the Middle East and presented a number of programmes focusing on intelligence agencies including MI6, MI5, GCHQ, the CIA, NSA and Mossad.


Reviews

Goodreads review by James on October 05, 2016

This was a fairly good book I had no idea the Brits were so involved in the question of WMD in Iraq The US media prefers to call george jr a liar. He may have been an idiot, but I don't think he lied p382 "the absence of evidence is not absence of evidence" footnote 96 from press briefing feb 2002 That do......more

Goodreads review by A.M. on February 07, 2023

An establishment insiders' rambling portrait of Britain's secret service. If an incisiveness-free, patchworked history of MI6 written in a painfully loud Oxbridge voice sounds like your idea of fun, this is the book you've been looking for. Alternately, if you are after a British equivalent to the ma......more

Goodreads review by David on July 07, 2021

This does not purport to be a comprehensive history of MI6 but it covers the ground from post-wr Vienna into the Cold War and Russian agents/defectors on into the post 9-11 world. Interface with politicians is covered well, including with Thatcher and the Gordievsky product and with Blair ahead of t......more

Goodreads review by Joe on September 06, 2014

This was very enjoyable to read and I learned a lot of new things. The book rattles along and charts the period from the end of the second world war through to the present. Stuffed full of interesting anecdotes about people and an organisation that is by turns impressive and then absurd. I hadn’t re......more

Goodreads review by Gheri on January 18, 2015

very informative......more