Gentleman Spies: Intelligence Agents in the British Empire and Beyond - Reviews - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Nov, 2002

Gentleman Spies: Intelligence Agents in the British Empire and Beyond. John Fisher. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00 (US$29.95). 209 pages. ISBN 0-7509-2698-8. As an historian working in the Public Record Office the author not surprisingly makes immense use of archival material in an attempt to 'illuminate the nature of British intelligence gathering overseas in the first decades of the twentieth century'.

Secret agents tended to be drawn from 'a relatively closely knit social group' -- upper middle class reaching into the upper classes. This book is not concerned with the organisations or the rank and file but with 'some of those unusual personalities whose intelligence-related activities reflected broader concerns about the safety of the empire and British interests'. By concentrating on individuals the author has woven a fascinating tapestry that covers the whole gamut of intelligence work in this period -- in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa, India and Russia under the Bolsheviks. To a degree this is the real world behind John Buchan's novel, Greenmantle. Disentangling the secretive world of the spy from the normal life of the trader or the scholar was not easy but the author has done a wonderful bit of detective work. He has produced a book that is thoroughly researched, highly readable, often entertaining and always stimulating. (R.S.)