Gchq [Hardcover]

Richard Aldrich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2010

The gripping inside story of the last unknown realm of the British secret service: GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters). GCHQ is the successor to the famous Bletchley Park wartime code-breaking organisation and is the largest and most secretive intelligence organisation in the country. During the war, it commanded more staff than MI5 and MI6 combined and has produced a number of intelligence triumphs, as well as some notable failures. Since the end of the Cold War, it has played a pivotal role in shaping Britain's secret state. Still, we know almost nothing about it. In this ground-breaking new book, Richard Aldrich traces GCHQ's evolvement from a wartime code-breaking operation based in the Bedfordshire countryside, staffed by eccentric crossword puzzlers, to one of the world leading espionage organisations. It is packed full of dramatic spy stories that shed fresh light on Britain's role in the Cold War - from the secret tunnels dug beneath Vienna and Berlin to tap Soviet phone lines, and daring submarine missions to gather intelligence from the Soviet fleet, to the notorious case of Geoffrey Pine, one of the most damaging moles ever recruited by the Soviets inside British intelligence. The book reveals for the first time how GCHQ operators based in Cheltenham affected the outcome of military confrontations in far-flung locations such as Indonesia and Malaya, and exposes the shocking case of three GGHQ workers who were killed in an infamous shootout with terrorists while working undercover in Turkey. Today's GCHQ struggles with some of the most difficult issues of our time. A leading force of the state's security efforts against militant terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda, they are also involved in fundamental issues that will mould the future of British society. Compelling and revelatory, Aldrich's book is the crucial missing link in Britain's intelligence history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for 'The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence': 'Rivetting, and essential reading not only for intelligence specialists but for everyone interested in the Cold War and in British-American relations.' Christopher Andrew 'A triumph of assiduous research and cogent analysis.' Sunday Telegraph 'Aldrich's meticulously factual account of British and American spookery!is hugely impressive.' John Booth, Tribune 'A truly brilliant book!this is intelligence for adults, and all the more enthralling for it.' George Walden, Evening Standard

About the Author

Richard Aldrich is a regular commentator on war and espionage and has written for the 'Evening Standard', the 'Guardian', 'The Times' and the 'Telegraph'. He is the author of several books, including 'The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence' which won the Donner Book Prize in 2002.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 688 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; First Edition edition (June 10, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007278470
• ISBN-13: 978-0007278473
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,283,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite scary, January 17, 2011

By 

Paul Rooney "Paul Rooney" (Opotiki,New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency (Kindle Edition)

This is the uncensored story of Britain's most secret intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters.

This book tells the story of Britain's electronic spying from WWII up until the present day.

It is a fascinating read and shows that the real intelligence gathering was done by "geeks" rather than by James Bond.

Tales of amazing bravery are told, we have submarines going into enemy harbours and getting as close as 6 feet away listening to signals from the opposition.

It shows how the electronic intell. gathering has had a huge bearing on all major military operations since WWII.

All is not perfect though, for some reason the British intelligence community did not learn from McLean , Philby and others. Geoffry Prime, the last really damaging spy found inside GCHQ was allowed to work for two years in a high security area before he was even vetted. Everyone was later surprised when he was found to be a spy and a paedophile!!!!!!

One very interesting fact written of here was that the Auckland power outages of 1998 were caused by hackers in Holland, rather than by faulty equipment in New Zealand, something that has never been spoken of here.

This is a very good book, not too technical and flows nicely covering many of the major moments of the 20th century.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unusually well written, page turner, November 26, 2011

By 

Ole Bjrsvik "Ole Bjørsvik" (5172 Loddefjord, - Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gchq (Paperback)

I reeled back as I got the book: British books this thick are usually horribly badly written, with a tiring never-ending use of passive voice. And where the author never let down a chance to use an obsolete four syllable adjective, where none would do better. ("See! I know a word!") - The forty pages of notes at the back didn't make it better. Seen it all before you know...

"OK, Let's slug it out. Let's see if we get to page thirty before I throw the book in the basket..."

But the writing was good. And it just became better and better. Especially when we got to the cold war... My breakfasts on street cafés in Paris got longer and longer. Even the labor strike in GCHQ in the eighties became readable.

For the cold war it fleshed out parts of the world that always have been somewhat hazy, perhaps dull. And you get stories that would have been a smash news hit on our days of news networks and internet. And without getting sensational.

Some seems to hold themselves aloft of reading novels by authors like Forsyth, Clancy Swedish Jan Guillou, and off coarse Belgian Albert Weinberg. But a series of books the last fifteen years are evidence that these authors really talked to people that was in the know: You read Aldrich's GCHQ, you come to a passage and you realize: "Oh, so that was the story behind that slightly cryptic subsentence in The Hunt for Red October..."

The book turned out to be a page turner.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book on The Subject, April 19, 2011

By 

Matthew M. Aid (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gchq (Hardcover)

Dr. Richard Aldrich's book on GCHQ is by far and away the best book written about the subject. No ifs, ands, or buts.

It is a weighty tome, weighing in at over 600-pages, and it certainly is not cheap. But you get your money's worth here. If you are really interested in the inner-workings of Britain's most secretive intelligence service and what it has been up to over the past 60+ years, this is the book you have to read.

You get it all here, both the successes and the failures, descriptions of the key personalities and the high-tech spy gear that the "Boys at Cheltenham" use, all written in a fashion that is both informative and quite readable.

It is also an honest book, candid and forthright about the darker aspects of GCHQ's work that in the past would have earned the author a less tha polite invitation to have a sit-down chat with the Crown Prosecutor's office. The material on GCHQ's up-and-down relationship with its American and English-speaking Commonwealth partners is particularly good.

Having spent the better part of twenty-five years myself researching the history of GCHQ's American counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA), I can fully appreciate just how much work went into this book. The book's Source Notes are ample testament to how industrious Dr. Aldrich was in searching out information from a variety of archival sources about a spy agency that has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep even the most mundane aspects of its work out of the public realm.

Well done. I honestly wish there were more books like this out there for us to read.

Matthew M. Aid
Washington, D.C.