M: Maxwell Knight, MI5’s Greatest Spymaster by Henry Hemming
Arrow, 416 pages, £9.99
If there are two characteristics that popular books about spies share, the first is that they claim to portray the greatest or most important spy ever to have lived; the second is that, if they’re about British spies, they undoubtedly feature the fabled inspiration for James Bond.
Hemming’s book is no exception to this rule. To his credit, the subject of the book does have the same title – ‘M’ – as the fictional head of James Bond’s MI6, and there certainly are a number of striking similarities. And this is much more than just another clichéd biography. Hemming has scoured the National Archives, contacted former members of Britain’s intelligence community, and been granted access to hitherto closed private collections of papers.
The result is a fast-paced and highly readable book that will appeal to specialist and generalist alike. There is lots of new material here, and Hemming keeps the story zipping along. The main focus is the Second World War, but there’s also lots of material on the pre- and postwar periods. Perhaps surprisingly for a man who spent his working life in the shadows, this is the third biography of Maxwell Knight – and by far the best.
Michael S Goodman is professor of intelligence and international affairs at King’s College London