From the host of The Rest is Classified podcast, this is the secret history of MI6 - from the Cold War to the present day.
'The history of MI6 in the words of real spies' Mail on Sunday
'The best post-1949 account of British intelligence I have read' Spectator
'As gripping as any novel' Independent

The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created over a century ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carré. In MI6, security expert Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.

It tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of the Second World War, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue, the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with working for British intelligence.

The grand dramas of the Cold War and its aftershocks - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 9/11 and the Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies at the centre of the narrative. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to their sworn enemies. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the truth is often more remarkable than the fiction.

'Corera presents his material as fast-paced stories . . . and he humanises the grand dramas of a duplicitous trade' Iain Finlayson, The Times

'[A] highly readable and well-researched account of the Service' Daily Telegraph

'Illuminating . . . told with the brio of a thriller and a good deal more clarity' Financial Times

'His analysis is shrewd, his judgement sound . . . [the book's] strength is to present stories of the secret service's successes and failures within the political and strategic context of the times' Adam Sisman, Sunday Times

'Compelling' Daily Express

'A fine overview, well told and well documented' Hayden Peake, CIA Library