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Life and Death in the British Secret Service
Pegasus
January 2013
On Sale: January 9, 2013
528 pages
ISBN: 1605983985
EAN: 9781605983981
Kindle: B00AFB5MWA
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History
From Berlin to the Congo, from Moscow to the back
streets of London, these are the stories of the agents on
the front lines of British intelligence. And the truth is
often more remarkable than fiction. MI6 has
been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was
created a hundred years ago. Our understanding of what it
is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional
worlds of Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Gordon Corera
provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this
secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.
He tells the story of how the secret service has changed
since the end of the Second World War and, by focusing on
the people and the relationships that lie at the heart of
espionage, illustrates the danger, the drama, the intrigue,
and the moral ambiguities that come with working for
British intelligence. From the defining
period of the early Cold War through to the modern day, MI6
has undergone a dramatic transformation from a gung-ho,
amateurish organisation to its modern, no less
controversial, incarnation. Gordon Corera reveals the
triumphs and disasters along the way. The grand dramas of
the Cold War, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the
Cuban Missile Crisis, the 11 September 2001 attacks, and
the Iraq War are the backdrop for the individual spies
whose stories form the centrepiece of the narrative. And
some of the individuals featured here, in turn, helped
shape the course of those events. 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 controlled to their
sworn enemies. And the truth is often more remarkable than
the fiction.
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