Alan Judd

At sixes and fives

Inside British Intelligence: 100 Years of MI5 and MI6, by Gordon Thomas

A passage in that most insidiously influential of histories, 1066 And All That, tries to explain who the Scots, Irish and Picts really were:

The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa.

Gordon Thomas’s account of MI5 and MI6 could lead to similar confusion. He correctly says they were founded in 1909 with Vernon Kell heading MI5, responsible for counter-espionage, and Mansfield Cumming MI6, responsible for espionage. Subsequently he says they both ‘emerged’ two years later out of the 1911 Official Secrets Act, when Churchill appointed the ‘wheezing and coughing’ Kell. Thomas criticises Kell for failing to deal with Irish nationalism (although that was not his responsibility) and claims he employed ‘Blinker’ Hall, who as Director of Naval Intelligence was very much senior to Kell and was the man who generally tasked Cumming. Later, Sir Dick White, who headed MI5, and subsequently MI6, is described as reorganising Kell’s MI6 (sic) and Stella Rimington, the first woman to head MI5, as having climbed the career ladder in Century House (headquarters of MI6). Sir Christopher Curwen, listed as chief of MI6, also pops up as head of MI5, while his contemporary Patrick Walker, who really did head MI5, is apparently in charge in Century House. Sir Anthony Duff, an outstanding head of MI5,

had a direct way of looking, a reminder of his days peering through a periscope when he had been one of the youngest submarine commanders in World War II



— but it didn’t help much because he even misread his map and allegedly spent his first week shaking hands with every occupant of every office in MI6.

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