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The Art Of Betrayal: Life And Death In The British Secret Service (2011)

by Gordon Corera(Favorite Author)

3.62 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0297860992 (ISBN13: 9780297860990)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Weidenfeld and Nicolson

review 1: This was very enjoyable to read and I learned a lot of new things. The book rattles along and charts the period from the end of the second world war through to the present. Stuffed full of interesting anecdotes about people and an organisation that is by turns impressive and then absurd. I hadn’t realised, for instance, the extent of British involvement in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Apparently the CIA weren’t allowed to send personnel in, but the book strongly implies MI6 were very busy on sabotage missions and organising assassinations. Also of interest is the level of what looks to be mental illness amongst double agents though there is the question of whether one is mentally ill to begin with, or whether the activity drives you over the edge. Perhaps ... morea bit of both. The agents’ handlers would often face a hard time looking after their charges. Oleg Penkovsky was given US and UK army officers uniforms to wear, clearly in order for him to feel important, when he was debriefed. (UK complained the US had given him one with medals which looked better than the one they were offering).I also realised for the first time quite how important Oleg Gordievsky had been, not because he gave info on numbers of tanks and planes etc, but because he could tell the West what the Soviet leadership’s views were. In the early 1980s they really did come close to believing that NATO was going to launch a pre-emptive strike. Once that was understood Thatcher and Reagan pulled back on the rhetoric.Perhaps the KGB should have just upped their surveillance on anyone called Oleg.Obviously it is difficult with a book like this to know precisely how accurate some of the detail is and I’m sure a lot of it will be modified over time as more information comes out.
review 2: This book is a very readable summary of the main episodes of SIS post-war history that are in the public domain. Some parts of it are based on new information such as Golitsyn's unpublished memoir. However, anyone looking for a new revelation about SIS will be disappointed. The parts about Philby, Penkovsky, Golitsyn and Gordievsky are well trodden ground, even if the material is well organised and presented. less

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