Recording secrets under orders.(The Guy Liddell Diaries, Vol. I, 1939-42)(Book Review)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 19-MAR-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

THE GUY LIDDELL DIARIES, VOLUME I, 1939-42

edited by Nigel West

Frank Cass, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 330, ISBN 0415352134

This book is a goldmine of once highly secret intelligence material: the diary kept, night by night, by the head of the counter-espionage branch of the security service, MI5. Diaries were forbidden to British combatants (though, luckily for historians, the chief of the general staff, among others, broke his own rule, and kept a long one). A special exception was made for Guy Liddell, who was ordered to keep one by his director-general. Here is the result as dictated nightly in the office, and kept for over 50 years in successive directorgenerals' office safes, codenamed...

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