Special relations

IN SPIES WE TRUST. THE STORY OF WESTERN INTELLIGENCE

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones Oxford University Press, £20

Reviewed by Jonathan Wright

WHEN members of the American security services arrived in London during the early decades of the 20th century, it was not unknown for them to start wearing top hats and adopt English accents. This i nfuriated their masters back in Washington ( it was all far too deferential) but such aping of British manners reflected an undeniable aspect of the era’s intelligence relationship: Britain was seen as the expert and the US was still the apprentice with a great deal to learn.

How times have changed. These days America is clearly the senior partner in a relationship that isn’t particularly special any more and a post-imperial island nation off the coast of Europe, while still useful on occasion, can easily be shoved around or flatly ignored.

In his extraordinarily detailed new book, Rhodri Jeffreys- Jones traces the evolution of Anglo-American intelligence relations over the past two centuries.

The basic trajectory is as follows: the US and Britain worked very well together for most of the period – though there were always tensions – but from the 1950s forwards things began to fall apart.

The US grew tired of being regarded as a trainee because this had become a ludicrous perception. It was the world’s most powerful nation and it had the most professional and successful intelligence operation on the planet in the CIA.

The student had become the master, and the list of squabbles and mishaps continued to grow: from Suez, to the Cambridge spies, to Britain’s noncommittal attitude towards the Vietnam conflict and its overly pragmatic approach to