Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire
The winner of the 2013 Longman-History Today Book Prize is the gripping and largely untold story of the role of the intelligence services in Britain’s retreat from empire.Against the background of the Cold War, and the looming spectre of Soviet-sponsored subversion in Britain’s dwindling colonial possessions, the imperial intelligence service MI5 played a crucial but top secret role in passing power to newly independent national states across the globe.Mining recently declassified intelligence records, Calder Walton reveals this ‘missing link’ in Britain’s post-war history. He sheds new light on everything from violent counter-insurgencies fought by British forces in the jungles of Malaya and Kenya, to urban warfare campaigns conducted in Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula. Drawing on a wealth of previously classified documents, as well as hitherto overlooked personal papers, this is also the first book to draw on records from the Foreign Office’s secret archive at Hanslope Park, which contains some of the darkest and most shameful secrets from the last days of Britain’s empire.Packed with incidents straight out of a John le Carré novel, Empire of Secrets is an exhilarating read by an exciting new voice in intelligence history.
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‘Both path-breaking and a very good read. Calder Walton reveals for the first time the full role of British Intelligence in the end of the largest empire in world history’
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER ANDREW, author of Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5
‘People who believe there’s not much left to learn about the British Empire should read this book. Calder Walton has sculpted a fascinating study of where spycraft touched palm and pine’
PROFESSOR PETER HENNESSY, author of The Secret State
‘Comprehensive and perceptive … It is one of those books that no student of the subject can ignore’
Spectator
‘Empire of Secrets is an important addition to the literature on decolonisation. It shines new light into the murky world of intelligence that underpinned the formalities of departure, the anthems and flag-lowering ceremonies, the wheeling parades and high-flown sentiments of nationalism’
Financial Times
‘An entertaining and welcome demystification of the intelligence services and their role in the demise of Britain’s empire’
Sunday Times
‘There is enough human anecdote and eccentricity in Empire of Secrets’ “high-octane” narrative to please even the most satiated consumer of such subjects … a story that often left me wondering what on earth we pay these people for’
Literary Review
‘With fluency and judiciousness, he tells how Britain’s secret services responded to, then helped engineer and fine-tune, and later hushed up one of the most important historical events of the last century … The history of Britain’s decolonisation will now begin to be rewritten. Walton’s first draft is acute, well-researched and agreeably lively’
Sunday Telegraph
‘For those interested in the Cold War, intelligence history, and British decolonization, [Empire of Secrets] proves indispensable’
New York Journal of Books
‘Fascinating … moves the spooks from the periphery of history to its heart … A well-documented, courageous and incisive first book by an author who has inhabited the real world of intelligence rather than a James Bond fantasy … required reading’
The Tablet
TO JENNIFER
We are quite impartial; we keep an eye on all people.
HERBERT MORRISON, Home Secretary (February 1941)
Contents
Map: Principal MI5 posts in the empire and Commonwealth in the early Cold War
1. Victoria’s Secrets: British Intelligence and Empire Before the Second World War
2. Strategic Deception: British Intelligence, Special Operations and Empire in the Second World War
4. The Empire Strikes Back: The British Secret State and Imperial Security in the Early Cold War
5. Jungle Warfare: British Intelligence and the Malayan Emergency
6. British Intelligence and the Setting Sun on Britain’s African Empire
7. British Intelligence, Covert Action and Counter-Insurgency in the Middle East
Conclusion – British Intelligence: The Last Penumbra of Empire
1. Sir Vernon Kell, the founding father of MI5. (Getty Images)
2. The original ‘C’, Sir Mansfield Cumming. (Imperial War Museum)
3. T.E. Lawrence. (Imperial War Museum)
4. RFC plane with aerial reconnaissance camera, 1916. (Imperial War Museum)
5. The ‘Colossus’ at Bletchley Park. (Topfoto)
6. Jasper Maskelyne. (Mary Evans Picture Library)
7. Dummy tank, Middle East, 1941–42. (The National Archives, ref. W0201–2022)
8. Dummy Spitfire. (The National Archives, ref. AIR20/4349)
9. Dudley Clarke. (Courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre)
10. László Almásy. (akg-images/Ullstein Bild)
11. Long Range Desert Group, North Africa. (Getty Images)
12. Sir Percy Sillitoe. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
13. Police use tear gas during a riot in Calcutta, 1947. (Getty Images)
14. The bombing of the King David Hotel, Jerusalem, 22 July 1946. (Getty Images)
15. Menachem Begin wanted poster. (Getty Images)
16. Sir John Shaw. (The Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford)
17. MI5 report on Jewish terrorism in the Middle East. (The National Archives, ref. CO 733/457/14)
18. British soldiers question a group of schoolboys in Jerusalem, 1947. (Getty Images)
19. Major Roy Farran at his brother’s grave, 1948. (PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images)
20. British paratrooper in the Malayan jungle, 1952. (Getty Images)
21. Ghana’s independence ceremony, 1957. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
22. Jomo Kenyatta. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
23. Suspected Mau Mau victim. (Getty Images)
24. Mau Mau prisoners in Kenya. (Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
25. The arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury, 22 June 1948. (Topfoto)
26. The Petrov affair, 1954. (National Archives of Australia)
27. British paratroopers embarking for Suez, 1956. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
28. Cheddi Jagan with ousted ministers, British Guiana, 1953.
