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To the person in the street, the British secret service conjures up images of the shaken, but never stirred suavity of James Bond. The reality of life inside MI6--the Security Service responsible for British operations outside of the United Kingdom--is a more dark narrative of intrigue and ineptitud
To the person in the street, the British secret service conjures up images of the shaken, but never stirred suavity of James Bond. The reality of life inside MI6--the Security Service responsible for British operations outside of the United Kingdom--is a more dark narrative of intrigue and ineptitude, alleges Stephen Dorril, author of this comprehensive and weighty tome. Don't plan to put this on your light reading list, for MI6 is a huge and dense book: 800 pages of text, plus a list of acronyms that runs to six pages and over 60 pages of notes. Dorril begins by observing that "Researching secret agencies--and there are a few more secret than MI6--is obviously a difficult task"; in the light of this he's done an admirable job. From his position as an outsider (Dorril has never been a member of the Security Services but has been researching their activities for nearly 20 years), his access to information and scholarship has little parallel in the murky history of whistle-blowers and legal actions. MI6 is crammed with information for the security service buff and the lay-person alike (although the latter may find the denseness of the text a little hard-going at times), which is by turn extraordinary, darkly comical and alarming, but never less than a remarkable insight into a service that operates in our name. --Carina Trimingham (Review copyright Amazon.co.uk)
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