Defend The Realm by Christopher Andrew

From The Week of March 07, 2010

To an extent, historians can't win. If their publications are too dry, we criticize them, as
I have done, for not animating their characters. However, if they err on the side of being too slick, too flashy, then we wonder how much literary license was taken with the facts. Is there a happy medium, or are there just readers with different tastes? That question needn't be settled here, for, coming in at 1,100 pages and weighing in at three pounds, there is little slickness about this mammoth history of Britain's domestic security service, MI5.

Christopher Andrew, a respected historian, was given access to MI5's actual files in this unique collaboration between the public record, as represented by academia, and secrecy, as treasured by the security services. The project's stated goal? To produce, for MI5's centennial, an authorized biography of the service, from its founding in the lead-up to the First World War, through to its noteworthy shift of responsibility from Soviet spying to counter-terrorism. And to the extent that we are educated in the most important cases MI5 has worked on, Mr. Andrew's history is meticulous and, as far as we know, thorough. But that's the problem with Defend The Realm; meticulousness is all we are offered. The personalities of the MI5 directors are given some attention, as are a handful of important operatives, but there's no grasp of MI5's culture, or personality. Defend The Realm is an utterly precise, but ultimately humorless look at one spy service's century of operations in the shadows and, to my knowledge, there isn't a single story about pills, hookers and a foreign dignitary together in a hotel room. Now, that wasn't the book's purpose, but if the character, the flavor, is missing, what else was too sensitive or too embarrassing to print?

For all its scholarliness, this is a fascinating collection of rivalries, engagements and politicking that is worth reading if you're interested in matters security. The book is structured like a pyramid, traveling linearly through the history of MI5. The founding and its initial years are given the most time, while each successive decade of service has a narrower and narrower scope. The book's last great hurrah chronicles the fall of the soviet Union because, though it touches on MI5's new objective of counter-terrorism, details are simply inadequate to consider this last section worthy of an authorized history. A flawed but interesting work which will not at all slake the thirst of those who believe that spying isn't so nearly lifeless as this. (3/5 Stars)