608 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
Defectors 625
Double Agents 626
Northern Ireland 626
Postwar Counterinsurgency Operations 626
Websites 627
INTRODUCTIONOne of the many paradoxes at the heart of British Intelligence is the
enormous amount that has been published on a topic that supposedly is
top secret. How can a ‘‘Secret Service’’ really be secret when details of
its history, operations, and personnel are so widely available, and have
been for years? Disclosures about Britain’s clandestine agencies date
back to the 19th century when Thomas Beach, alias ‘‘Major Henri le
Caron,’’ releasedTwenty-Five Years in the Secret Service: The Recol-
lections of a Spy(1893). However, it was probably the inspirational cre-
ator of the Boy Scout movement, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, who made
the subject appealing to a wider readership withMy Adventures as a
Spyin 1915. The following year, in 1916, the former Liberal MP Tre-
bitsch Lincoln caused a furor in New York withRevelations of an Inter-
national Spy, purporting to be an account of his work as an agent,
initially for the Germans and then for the British. Sixteen years later his
appropriately titled memoirs, published in Germany,The Autobiogra-
phy of an Adventurer, were translated and published in the United
States.
Following World War I, there were further revelations, falling into
two broad categories: the memoirs of participants who gave accounts
of their adventures, and more general books written by journalists anx-
ious to capitalize on the enduring popularity of the second oldest pro-
fession—and often none too scrupulous with their facts.
Books by the authentic intelligence officers who went into print in-
clude J. C. Lawson’sTales of Aegean Intrigue, Sir Campbell Stuart’s
The Secrets of Crewe House, Captain L. B. Weldon’sHard Lying: East-
ern Mediterranean 1914–1919, andI Was a Spy!by Marthe McKenna,
a book remarkable for an endorsement with a foreword from Winston
Churchill. There was alsoWho Goes There?by Henry de Halsalle, who
described his book as ‘‘an account of the Secret Service Adventures of
‘Ex-Intelligence’ during the Great War of 1914–1918’’; Sam Hoare