Intelligence Power in Practice

This volume examines the past and present of British intelligence, drawing on Hermans professional experience and personal recollections. It offers an insider's perspective on the Cold War intelligence contest against the Soviet Union and its legacy today, including proposals for intelligence ethics and reform. Herman also discusses the role of personalities in the British intelligence community and provides sketches of Cold War contemporaries. His combination of operational experience and academic reflection makes this volume a unique contribution to intelligence scholarship.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 432 pages
Publication date: 31 August 2024
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

This volume draws on Hermans professional experience and personal recollections to examine the past and present of British intelligence. In twenty-one chapters, he offers an insider's perspective on the Cold War intelligence contest against the Soviet Union and its continuing legacy today. This includes proposals for intelligence ethics and reform in the twenty-first century, as well as the declassified copy of his evidence to the 2004 Butler Review. Herman also discusses the role of personalities in the British intelligence community, producing sketches of Cold War contemporaries on the JIC and several Directors of GCHQ. The combination of operational experience and academic reflection makes this volume a unique contribution to intelligence scholarship.

Michael Herman (1929-2021) was the world's leading intelligence practitioner-academic. Among his senior roles during a thirty-five-year career in Her Majestys Civil Service, he was Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee from 1972-75 and Head of several GCHQ Divisions in the 1970s-80s. After his professional retirement, he was a Gwilym Gibbon Research Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford and founding director of the Oxford Intelligence Group.

Weight: 650g
Dimension: 155 x 232 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474499552