Espionage is taken for granted today as the unacceptable but unavoidable veiled activity of modern statecraft. But how and why did it all begin? Elizabeth Sparrow’s ‘secret history’ takes as its starting point the period immediately following the French revolution: a turbulent time, both on the Continent and in Britain, as the established order came under threat of imminent social upheaval.
    To this point can be traced the true story of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and the origins of a British secret service (ultimately the MI5 and MI6 of the twentieth century), as Pitt’s administration, advised by Louis XVI’s ex-ministers, reacted to the threat of a French- style revolution in Britain by instituting police surveillance to counteract immigration and sedition. A foreign secret service followed, to infiltrate the French revolutionary government’s actions; at the same time, British-paid police in Paris helped potential victims to escape.
    Once established, espionage activity intensified in the ensuing decades, finally achieving covert formal status as Napoleon’s military domination of Europe drew together an international set of intelligentsia, who, with secret British assistance, directed the urgent imperative of manipulating his ministers and generals.
ELIZABETH SPARROW has a lifelong interest in the post- revolutionary secret service,  from which stems this fascinating study of a little-known aspect of history. She is an acknowledged authority in the field and has written a number of articles, but this book is her first, and the first, extended survey of the origins of operational secret service.
    Jacket: Secret tokens used by French Royalists in Paris and by the Privy Council on interrogation of a double agent. They remain in the Public Record Office, with whose permission this photograph is reproduced.
 

Boydell & Brewer Ltd   ISBN 0851157645

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