British Secret Service During the Great War

A rare, firsthand account of British intelligence at the dawn of the Great War. Nicholas Everitt, a man who actually walked the shadowy corridors of the Secret Service, pulls no punches in his account of 1914: a year of deceptive prosperity and dangerous complacency. German spies moved freely through British streets while the government slept. Everitt chronicles his own transformation from eager civilian into intelligence operative, revealing the chaotic, ad hoc nature of early wartime recruitment. This is not polished history written from a safe distance - it is the raw, often damning observations of someone who watched the machinery of British security fail in real time. His critique of governmental shortsightedness and institutional unpreparedness reads as both historical record and bitter indictment. For anyone seeking to understand how intelligence actually worked - and frequently failed - during the war that reshaped the modern world, this volume offers an irreplaceable witness.