MI6: Fifty Years Of Special Operations

MI6 is one of Britain's most elusive organisations, its operations remain veiled from scrutiny. It is impossible under current laws to write about the daily activities of MI6 and its sister service, MI5. But MI6 has a history, and that reveals a great deal.

At the beginning of the Cold War, Britain was a global power literally dividing up the world. By 1992 influence abroad had been lost in the Middle East, most of Africa and large swathes of Asia, and even in Europe Britain seemed exiled and isolated. What had MI6 been doing? Here for the first time is an operational history of MI6. It is at times stirring, at others full of bathos or low farce.

MI6 is Britain's player at the chessboard of international intelligence gathering. Dorril's is a searching story of the characters and situations in which the games have been played during half a century of international political intriguing, spying and thuggery - all in the name of intelligence.