From Publishers Weekly

Two famous British institutions will celebrate their centenaries in 2009: the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI5 and MI6. They maintain an aura of secrecy, a touch of sophistication and a hint of melodrama even in this age of populist candor. Thomas (Descent into Danger), who enjoys justified respect as an authority on the intelligence world, has a broad spectrum of contacts and confidants in both services. He taps their memories and insights in this reconstruction of Britain's intelligence operations from the Age of Empire through the cold war and into today's constantly metamorphosing Islamic challenge. The emphasis on personal evidence at the expense of archival sources gives the work an anecdotal tone and a contemporary focus that makes the subtitle misleading. Both are compensated for by the immediacy of the material and the vividness of the narration, presenting a fascinating cast of moles and double agents, whistle-blowers and politicians. For the ambience of the closed world that inspired James Bond and George Smiley, this book is a winner. (Mar. 3)

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From Booklist

A veteran writer offers this centennial history of the two almost legendary British intelligence agencies, MI5 (foreign) and MI6 (domestic). Founded during the run-up to World War I, they have served the British Crown with varying degrees of skill and success in all the political conundrums and crises since. They have also been gold mines for thriller writers. As an author of intelligence-related fiction and nonfiction (e.g., Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, 3d ed., 2007), Thomas bring to the agencies’ histories a high level of expertise, a fluent style accessible to lay reader and expert alike, and a combination of frankness and balance about some of his subjects’ less glorious chapters. Those involve such things as the Soviet mole during the post–World War II era, the ongoing tension with the CIA, and the problem of deciding whether operations against the IRA and more recent terrorist groups are foreign or domestic. A good basic book on its subjects. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.