The Rise of the Secret World

Christopher Andrew delivers a stunning secret archaeology of a subject that he himself helped to create – Richard J. Aldrich * Times Literary Supplement * Brilliant in its sweep and near-miraculous in the detail and confident judgements provided on two and a half millennia of spying … The book is a crowning triumph of one of the most adventurous scholars of the security world – John Lloyd * Financial Times * To write a world history of intelligence, from the dawn of recorded history to the present day, is a daunting task. To make such a work accurate, comprehensive, digestible and startling, and all in a single volume, is a stellar achievement. But that is what Christopher Andrew has done in The Secret World. – Edward Lucas * The Times *

Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and former Chair of the Faculty of History at Cambridge University. He is also chair of the British Intelligence Study Group, Founding Co-Editor of Intelligence and National Security, former Visiting Professor at Harvard, Toronto and the Australian National University, and a regular presenter of BBC Radio and TV documentaries. His most recent book, The Defence of the Realm- The Authorized History of MI5, was a major international bestseller. His fifteen previous books include The Mitrokhin Archive volumes 1 and 2, and a number of path-breaking studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history.