Best-selling author James Morton tells the story of organized espionage in Britain from spy fever early in the 20th century to the end of the First World War and the rise of air intelligence. He introduces us to a world of colorful characters and dark underhand dealing in which spies, male and female, driven by love, money, patriotism or a mix of all of them, struggled to survive. The first English officer spies are featured alongside their frequently flamboyant French, Belgium and German counterparts - from the hunchback dentist Wilhelm Klauer to the 'Grande (and lesser) horizontales' such as Mata Hari. So too are their controllers such as authors John Buchan and Somerset Maugham and men like Richard Tinsley who oversaw a network of some 2000 spies from Holland. As professionalism grew great successes emerged - not least the deciphering of the intercepted Zimmerman telegram - along with notable failures. Morton tackles both in a meticulously researched narrative that balances the history of espionage with the human stories of individuals and tales of heroism with cowardice, incompetence and betrayal.

Informative and innovative, this book focuses on the cultural images, realities, challenges, and contradictions for women in intelligence service in Britain during World War I.

"Describes the role spies played during World War II. Readers' choices reveal various historical details"--

This complex and “always entertaining” espionage novel takes readers to the dawn of the most fascinating characters of the 20th century—the spy (Washington Post). On the eve of WWI, a Scottish car salesman’s ‘innocent’ data-gathering plunges him into a high-stakes game of espionage he never expected. It is 1913, and those who follow the news closely can see the world is teetering on the brink of war. Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman with an uncanny ear for languages, has always hoped to make a job for himself as a spy. As his sales calls take him from city to great city—Hong Kong to Shanghai to San Francisco to New York—he moonlights collecting intelligence for His Majesty’s Secret Service, but British espionage is in its infancy and Jack has nothing but a shoestring budget and the very tenuous protection of a boss in far-away London. He knows, though, that a geopolitical catastrophe is brewing, and now is both the moment to prove himself and the moment his country needs him most. Unfortunately, this is also the moment he begins to realize what his aspiration might cost him. He understands his life is at stake when activities in China suddenly escalate from innocent data-gathering and casual strolls along German military concessions to arrest warrants and knife attacks. Meanwhile, a sharp, vivacious American suffragette journalist has wiled her way deep into his affections, and it is not long before he realizes that her Irish-American family might be embroiled in the Irish Republican movement Jack’s bosses are fighting against. How can he choose between his country and the woman he loves? And would he even be able to make such a choice without losing both?

The first full account of Hitler's extensive intelligence network-and the dramatic story of how Germany lost the battle of the secret services in World War II.

SNOW is the codename assigned to Arthur Owens, one of the most remarkable British spies of the Second World War. This 'typical Welsh underfed type' became the first of the great double-cross agents who were to play a major part in Britain's victory over the Germans. When the stakes could not have been higher, MI5 sought to build a double-cross system based on the shifting loyalties of a duplicitous, philandering and vain anti-hero who was boastful and brave, reckless and calculating, ruthless and mercenary...but patriotic. Or was he? Based on recently declassified files and meticulous research, Snow reveals for the first time the truth about an extraordinary man.

“Classical Spies will be a lasting contribution to the discipline and will stimulate further research. Susan Heuck Allen presents to a wide readership a topic of interest that is important and has been neglected.” —William M. Calder III, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Classical Spies is the first insiders’ account of the operations of the American intelligence service in World War II Greece. Initiated by archaeologists in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, the network drew on scholars’ personal contacts and knowledge of languages and terrain. While modern readers might think Indiana Jones is just a fantasy character, Classical Spies disclosesevents where even Indy would feel at home: burying Athenian dig records in an Egyptian tomb, activating prep-school connections to establish spies code-named Vulture and Chickadee, and organizing parachute drops. Susan Heuck Allen reveals remarkable details about a remarkable group of individuals. Often mistaken for mild-mannered professors and scholars, such archaeologists as University of Pennsylvania’s Rodney Young, Cincinnati’s Jack Caskey and Carl Blegen, Yale’s Jerry Sperling and Dorothy Cox, and Bryn Mawr’s Virginia Grace proved their mettle as effective spies in an intriguing game of cat and mouse with their Nazi counterparts. Relying on interviews with individuals sharing their stories for the first time, previously unpublished secret documents, private diaries and letters, and personal photographs, Classical Spies offers an exciting and personal perspective on the history of World War II.