UNITED KINGDOM

Memoirs

The Cold War and After

Bethell, Nicholas. Spies and Other Secrets: Memoirs from the Second Cold War. London: Viking/Penguin, 1995.

Surveillant 4.2 notes that the author "lost his post in the Heath government due to []his obsession with human rights." He was "an opponent of the Soviet state throughout the Cold War period, and this account illustrates the ironies and difficulties of communication and understanding between East and West." The reviewer directs attention to chapters on "My Friend Oleg," on his meeting with Oleg Gordievsky, and "The Katyn Murder Mystery: 1942-92."

Cavendish, Anthony. Inside Intelligence. London: Collins, 1990.

Surveillant 1.2 notes that this book was "originally banned" in 1988. Cavendish "seeks to defend the reputation of Maurice Oldfield, Chief of MI6.... [C]harges of homosexual behavior made Oldfield's close confidant, Cavendish (a former intelligence officer and journalist), write to set the record straight." Chambers sees this as "one of the few [books] to give real insight into MI6 operations." According to Lucas, I&NS 6.3, Cavendish served in MI6 from 1948 to 1953, and "only 39 pages of the book" are devoted to this period.

Cross, John P. First In, Last Out: An Unconventional British Officer in Indo-China. London: Brassey's, 1992.

Tonnesson, I&NS 10.3, notes that Cross served with the Gurkhas who suppressed the revolution in southern Vietnam in 1945. In 1972-1976, he was the British defense attaché in Vientiene. The first part of the book "adds nothing to our understanding of what happened in Indochina in 1945-46." The second part provides an "at times fascinating ... account of the atmosphere within the ... international community of Vientiene.... Cross has some arresting episodes ... to recount, but they are drowned in the author's unrelenting attempts to satisfy his own vanity.... The normal reader is likely to be ... disgusted by the author's frenetic self-praise." It is likely that, when they become available, Cross' reports from Vientiene "will be valuable sources.... But if you do not have to read the book, don't."

Crozier, Brian. Free Agent: The Unseen War, 1941-1991. London: HarperCollins, 1993.

Chambers calls this book "really quite horrible. Crozier seems to be unaware of the dilemma that an ideological battle presents to an open society." To Porter, I&NS 9.4, Free Agent is "almost one continuous boast." Crozier "was (perhaps still is) a kind of freelance anti- Communist covert agent." His story reads well.

Surveillant 3.4/5 notes that Crozier claims "links to MI5, MI6, the CIA, Mossad, and to defectors from the KGB, the DGI and other Communist services." This is an "unusual perspective to the intelligence battles of the cold war -- and it is exciting reading." Economist, 31 Jul. 1993, comments that "extremists see the world through distorting glasses. Brian Crozier's squint [is] so far right that one can ask how much of what he saw was in his own head.... The wells of British politics have been poisoned ... by myths like his own 'communist takeover of Labour.'"

Crozier, Brian. The KGB Lawsuits. London: Claridge Press, 1995.

According to Surveillant 4.2, Crozier claims that certain lawsuits aimed at him and others were actually the result of KGB "active measures" activities. This book "is a blow-by-blow account" of several such lawsuits. The cases are also mentioned in the author's Free Agent.

de la Mare, Arthur [Sir]. Perverse and Foolish: A Jersey Farmer's Son in the British Diplomatic Service. Jersey: La Haule Books, 1994 [limited edition].

Kerr, I&NS 13.4, notes that the author "had a very distinguished career in the Foreign Office between 1936 and 1973.... [H]e would have been much more informative had he written with the needs and interests of scholars in mind."

Among de la Mare's wartime experiences was a posting "to Washington to work in a branch of the Political Warfare Executive, in Colorado, which broadcast[] propaganda to the Japanese. However he reveals nothing else about this important aspect of Britain's war effort." Later, in 1953-1956, de la Mare spent three months as Assistant Head of the Permanent-Undersecretaries Department (PUSD) and headed the Foreign Office Security Department for three years.

Elliott, Geoffrey. I Spy: The Secret Life of a British Agent. London: Little Brown, 1998. New ed. 2000. [pb] London: St. Ermin's, 2001. [pb]

From publisher: The author seeks to learn "the truth about his father," Maj. Kavan Elliott, "World War II saboteur, rogue and peacetime spy[.] Behind an ostensibly respectable facade, his business covered a nomadic life which entangled him in a web of deception,... communist double-agents and interrogation at the hands of the Gestapo and the Hungarian secret police."

Elliott, Nicholas.

1. Never Judge a Man by His Umbrella. Salisbury, UK: Michael Russell, 1991. [pb] London: Chatto and Windus, 1992.

Surveillant 2.2 notes that Elliott was the "lifelong chum of -- and one of the debriefers of -- Kim Philby."

Defty, I&NS 10.1, comments that Elliott "manages to recall his life from childhood to the present day without once revealing that he was ever in SIS." His account of his overseas' assignments "reveals more about the social whirl of a British diplomat than it does about the life of an intelligence officer.... Yet ... Elliott offers a balanced and incisive account of Germany's most successful agent operation in Turkey, the case of the German agent Cicero." Elliott's account of his "confrontation with Philby in Beirut ... offers little in the way of new information, and fails to resolve the controversy surrounding" that meeting.

2. With My Little Eye: Observations Along the Way. Norwich, UK: Michael Russell, 1993.

Surveillant 3.6 says that Elliott "discusses his assessment of the future of intelligence and gives his opinion on the Buster Crabb affair." He says Crabb "had already made one initial dive to examine the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze.... It is his belief that Crabb did not die from any actions from the Soviets ... [but] of respiratory problems ... or from equipment failure." There is also a "section on his interactions (favorable) with James Angleton ... [and some] final reflections on Philby."

Defty, I&NS 10.1, sees nothing in this book "to concern the guardians of official secrecy, and unfortunately very little to interest the academic reader." The first essay "offers a sterling defense of British intelligence, pointing out both the lessons learnt from past failures, and the continued utility of intelligence in the post-Cold War world." According to Gordievsky, The Spectator, 5 Feb. 1994, "Elliott's book is full of short, elegant vignettes, recollections and some very eccentric friends, amusing anecdotes, jokes and comic quotations."

Rimington, Stella. Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5. London: Hutchinson, 2001.

Unsinger, IJI&C 16.1, is unimpressed with the former MI5 Director-General's account, "commenting that Rimington didn't really relate anything other than a few observations and anecdotal material." Her "descriptions ultimately fail to devolve into something more substantial." For Bath, NIPQ 18.2/3, there are certainly "no family jewels" to be found here. "The main thrust of the book remains ... the trail-blazing progress of a woman in what heretofore had been thought a man's world."

Sillitoe, Percy [Sir]. Cloak Without Dagger. London: Cassell, 1955. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1955.

Constantinides: Sillitoe headed MI5 from 1946 to 1953, but most of the book concerns his long career in the colonies and in the United Kingdom. "Little is said of his experience" at MI5's helm. Cockerill's biography, Sir Percy Sillitoe (1975), does little to rectify the situation.

Wright, Peter, with Paul Greengrass. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer. New York: Viking, 1987. UB271G72W758

Cram sees the book as "filled with errors, exaggerations, bogus ideas, and self-inflation"; nevertheless, it "is one of the outstanding works in the field of intelligence literature.... [I]t is so full of bombast, the joy of the hunt, English eccentricities, and factual data that it must be required reading for anyone interested in intelligence." It is Wright's obsession that "beginning with Golitsyn's 1963 visit to England,... the British services, particularly MI-5, were penetrated by the Russians."

According to Smith, IJI&C 2.1, Spycatcher is "uneven, bitter, sloppy, and fascinating." The author "bitterly resents the small size of his gov't pension.... The generally sober and convincing description of his work is certainly the most interesting part.... [E]xaggeration and distortion ... are less apparent there than in the sections dealing with the activities into which Wright branched out. These include spy-pursuing...; in particular, his efforts to identify his boss, Sir Roger Hollis, as a Russian spy.... [T]he parts ... concerned with the pursuit of Hollis have more than their share of the purple prose and unconvincing, sometimes ludicrous, details that come and go in the book."

NameBase focuses on the history of the book, commenting that "Wright's book was a major challenge to Britain's secrecy laws, as British officials banned the book and then tried unsuccessfully to win an injunction against publication in a widely-reported trial in Australia. This of course guaranteed that the book would be a bestseller, whereupon some of Wright's allegations received more attention than they probably deserved."

For Gelber, I&NS 4.2, the book is "full of fascinating stories and vignettes.... [But] Wright clearly has several chips on both shoulders about the British class system and public school attitudes.... He emerges from his own story as quirky, dogged and pernickety.... He is not a particularly admirable man."

Clark comment: The credibility of Gelber's review is lessened by some glaringly off-the-mark -- and in the final analysis unnecessary -- remarks. For example, he avers that intelligence "[s]ervices employ full-time special and disinformation staffs to confuse comment, for instance by leaking selected or even entirely fictional accounts of some operation or career." The implication of large numbers of people engaged in manipulation of the public record simply does not reflect reality. And he follows that by arguing that "the CIA fabricated an entire Penkovsky 'diary,'" a mantra heard often over the years from anti-CIA types but an untruth that has long been put to rest for those who pay attention to such things.

See also D. Cameron Watt, "Fall-out from Treachery: Peter Wright and Spycatcher," Political Quarterly 59 (Apr.-Jun. 1988): 206-218.

Wynne, Greville. The Man from Moscow: The Story of Wynne and Penkovsky. London: Hutchinson, 1967. Contact on Gorky Street. New York: Atheneum, 1968.

Pforzheimer: "A British agent's first-hand, though somewhat colored, account of his missions to Moscow to contact Colonel Penkovskiy."

Return to UK Memoirs Table of Contents