MI6: The Real James Bonds 1909-39

“Engrossing. . . . As a rollicking chronicle of demented derring-do, Smith’s book is hard to beat. His research is prodigious and his eye for a good story impeccable, and his book, while perfectly scholarly, often reads like a real-life James Bond thriller.”—Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times

Six tells the complete story of the Secret Intelligence Service’s birth in 1909 and its first thirty years, including the tragic tale of what happened to Britain’s extensive interwar networks in Soviet Russia. It tells the story of Britain’s hidden networks in the United States, thwarting German shipping saboteurs and tracking down Indian seditionaries. It also shows the development of “tradecraft” and the great personal risk officers and their agents took, far from home and unprotected, as well as the violence meted out in the King’s name—including running a Swiss murder gang that used attractive girls to lure and murder Bolshevik messengers.

This first part of Six takes us up to the eve of World War II, using hundreds of previously unreleased files and interviews with key players to show how one of the world’s most secretive of secret agencies originated and developed into something like the MI6 we know today.

Michael Smith, former military intelligence officer and award-winning journalist, is one of the world’s leading experts on Britain’s spies. The defense correspondent of The Sunday Times, he is author of the bestseller Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team and Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews.