Enemies Within: Communists, Spies and the Making of Modern Britain
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Enemies Within: Communists, Spies and the Making of Modern Britain
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Narrated by:
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Richard Trinder
About this listen
With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its allies.
Enemies Within is a new history of the influence of Moscow on Britain told through the stories of those who chose to spy for the Soviet Union. It also challenges entrenched assumptions about abused trust, corruption and Establishment cover-ups that began with the Cambridge Five and the disappearance of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean on the night boat to Saint-Malo in 1951.
In a book that is as intellectually thrilling as it is entertaining and illuminating, Richard Davenport-Hines traces the bonds between individuals, networks and organisations over generations to offer a study of character, both individual and institutional. At its core lie the operative traits of boarding schools, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Intelligence Division, Foreign Office, MI5, MI6 and Moscow Centre.
Davenport-Hines tells many stories of espionage, counter-espionage and treachery. With its vast scope, ambition and scholarship, Enemies Within charts how the undermining of authority, the rejection of expertise and the suspicion of educational advantages began, and how these have transformed the social and political temper of modern Britain.
©2017 Richard Davenport-Hines (P)2017 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"Succinct, lively and well-written biography...Done with great panache, in a volume that will introduce Keynes and his strange world to a new generation of readers." (Evening Standard)
"An amusing, elegant and provocative writer ...great fun. By focusing on Keynes as a private man and public figure rather than an academic economist, it is possible to see him as the last and greatest flowering of Edwardian Liberalism." (Sunday Times)
"Daringly but sensibly, this renowned biographer, Davenport-Hines, has studied Keynes from seven points of view - not one of them as an economist...a rewarding and fascinating book." (Daily Mail)
What listeners say about Enemies Within: Communists, Spies and the Making of Modern Britain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Mary Carnegie
- 05-08-20
Broader than Cambridge ring
The author expands greatly on the predominant contemporary accounts of spy rings, amplified by popular fiction and unreliable memoirs, and, of course, journalists, especially but not confined, to the right-wing mass market tabloids.
He has something of a mission to exculpate class as a major factor in espionage for USSR from within security services, not entirely convincingly. OK, Cairncross wasn’t “posh”, but it’s stretching it to claim Burgess, Blunt, Philby and Maclean were well down the pecking order of the complex English class system.
The incomprehension between UK & USA culture, and its consequences for cooperation in matters of security and diplomacy are well explained.
The witch-hunt which followed the first discoveries of Soviet spies in UK/USA, especially the latter, was tragic. It is no absolution to claim other countries behaved more cruelly.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- PETER ROWLEY
- 21-12-20
Well written
Well worth a listen, the book offers a few new insights due to it being written after the release of recent MI5 files in the national archives.
The narrator does a great job which always helps.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- David H. Furnival
- 14-03-21
Quite shocking
We have been undermined by our own people as much as by Russian spies and their agents
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3 people found this helpful