Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
The Secret Twenties : British Intelligence, the Russians and the Jazz Age, Hardback Book

The Secret Twenties : British Intelligence, the Russians and the Jazz Age Hardback

Hardback

Item not Available

Description

Espionage and counter-espionage between the Soviets and the British during London's Roaring TwentiesAt the height of the hedonistic Jazz Age, many in British society became convinced that they were under attack from the new Soviet state.

Still reeling from the Russian revolution of 1917, disturbed by the development of militant workers movements at home, and deeply paranoid about the recent wave of Russian immigration to the UK, the British government tasked the intelligence services to look for evidence of espionage.

Over the next decade, as the political pressure mounted, the spooks began to cast their net of suspicion wider, to include not only suspect Russians, but British aristocrats, Bloomsbury artists, ordinary workers, and even members of parliament. It was the biggest spying operation in British Intelligence's peacetime history to date, undertaken with enthusiastic support from anti-Red crusaders like Winston Churchill, and its ramifications were profound. On the strength of the evidence uncovered, Britain deported hundreds of Russians and broke off diplomatic links with Moscow for more than two years.

This was the first Cold War, and it not only set the rules of engagement for Russia and Britain for decades to come, but also sent shockwaves through the British establishment, bringing down a government and ending careers.

Drawing on a wealth of recently declassified and previously unseen material, Timothy Phillips uncovers a world of suspicion and extremism, bureaucracy and betrayal set against the sparkling backdrop of cocktail-era London. The Secret Twenties shines fresh light on a glamorous decade, and offers a gripping account of the lives of the first Soviet spies, the British Secret Services that pursued them and the double agents in their midst.

Information

Other Formats

Save 22%

£20.00

£15.59

Item not Available
Item not Available
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information