The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

'The most comprehensive narrative of intelligence compiled ... unrivalled' Max Hastings, Sunday Times

'Captivating, insightful and masterly' Edward Lucas, The Times

The history of espionage is far older than any of today's intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The first mention of espionage in world literature is in the Book of Exodus.'God sent out spies into the land of Canaan'. From there, Christopher Andrew traces the shift in the ancient world from divination to what we would recognize as attempts to gather real intelligence in the conduct of military operations, and considers how far ahead of the West - at that time - China and India were. He charts the development of intelligence and security operations and capacity through, amongst others, Renaissance Venice, Elizabethan England, Revolutionary America, Napoleonic France, right up to sophisticated modern activities of which he is the world's best-informed interpreter. What difference have security and intelligence operations made to course of history? Why have they so often forgotten by later practitioners? This fascinating book provides the answers.

Christopher Andrew, Britain’s leading historian of intelligence, is a professor of modern and contemporary history and the chair of the faculty of history at the University of Cambridge. He is also chair of the British Intelligence Study Group; coeditor of Intelligence and National Security; a former visiting professor at Harvard University, the University of Toronto, and the Australian National University; and a regular presenter of BBC Radio and TV documentaries. His 14 books include The Mitrokhin Archive, volumes 1 and 2, and a number of groundbreaking studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history.