GORDON THOMAS SECRET WARS: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF BRITISH INTELLIGENCE (St. Martin’s Press, 2009)
By Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis
Note: Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis (joe [at] intelNews.org) teaches politics, history and intelligence at King College, USA. He is Senior Editor at www.intelNews.org.
Gordon Thomas’ Secret Wars (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), whose publication coincides with the centennial year of Britain’s intelligence and security services, is a useful historical narrative of MI5 and MI6. The book’s strength rests on Thomas’ skilled storytelling, which, coupled with some interesting new information, will appeal to both popular enthusiasts and scholarly devotees of intelligence history. The latter, however, will have to overcome the surprising absence of any source notes in the book. Thomas attempts to make up for this by naming approximately half of his primary information sources. Noticeably, however, of the author’s 44 named primary sources, 12 are Israelis and only 11 are British.