Through the eyes of spies

Spying is a branch of philosophy, although you would never guess it from that expression on Daniel Craig’s face. Its adepts interrogate the surface of reality — people, landscapes, texts — knowing that they will discover extraordinary hermetic meanings. They study fragments of documents, whispers of messages, and from these, they summon entire worlds. Possibly one of the reasons Max Hastings cannot pretend to be hugely impressed by the boasts of wartime spies is the philosophical nebulousness of what constitutes ‘results’ in secret-agent speak. Soldiers fight, shoulder to shoulder; battles are clearly lost and won. But those who work in the shadows — and in The Secret War, Hastings turns the spotlight on spies in every continent — are frequently ungovernable individualists whose efforts are more difficult to quantify.

Not that he has devoted 600 pages to being dismissive of every Special Operations Executive plot to set Europe ablaze, or code-breaking triumph, or brave infiltration, or double-agent deception. He writes of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s native cipher skill, of Soviet 007 Richard Sorge, and of unsung Bletchley boffins like Bill Tutte with proper and infectious relish. The brilliance of the D-Day Double Cross deception — making the Germans look the wrong way as Operation Overlord began — is duly acknowledged. But for every formidably brave spy providing ‘human intelligence’ by scouting out enemy territory and personnel, he also provides a magnificent parade of crooks, alcoholics and fantasists such as Ronald Seth (his codename: ‘Blunderhead’).

And the agents’ controllers are not beyond criticism. Hastings quotes the ninth Duke of Buccleuch, who was fag at Eton to Brigadier Stewart Menzies, wartime head of MI6. The Duke was mystified, he told a friend, ‘how so unbelievably stupid a man could have ended up in such a position’.