The Black Door, Richard Aldrich
The Black Door, Richard Aldrich
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The Black Door

Author: Richard Aldrich, Rory Cormac

Narrator: Tom Clegg

Unabridged: 25 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/21/2016

Synopsis

The Black Door Intelligence can do a prime minister’s dirty work. For more than a century, secret wars have been waged directly from Number 10. They have staved off conflict, defeats and British decline through fancy footwork, often deceiving friend and foe alike. Yet as the birth of the modern British secret service in 1909, prime ministers were strangers to the secret world – sometimes with disastrous consequences. During the Second World War, Winston Churchill oversaw a remarkable revolution in the exploitation of intelligence, bringing it into the centre of government. Chruchill’s wartime regime also formed a school of intelligence for future prime ministers, and its secret legacy has endured. Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and David Cameron all became great enthusiasts for spies and special forces. Although Britain’s political leaders have often feigned ignorance about what one prime minister called this ‘strange underworld’, some of the most daring and controversial intelligence operations can be traced straight back to Number 10.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cold War Conversations Podcast on July 18, 2016

Compulsory reading for future Prime Ministers Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac have put together an immensely readable and well researched book. Their style keeps the book from being a dry history and brings events to life and details many stories I hadn’t even heard of. The different “relationships”......more

Goodreads review by Tim on May 21, 2017

The Black Door (a reference to the front door of 10 Downing Street and nothing more sinister) is not a conventional history of intelligence nor a work of straightforward political narrative, it is a review of the relationship between British Prime Ministers and their intelligence and security appara......more

Goodreads review by Harry on November 28, 2017

Excellent and very readable. As this is a chronological review of a fairly specialised subject it could could easily have been a predictable re-hash of much that is well known. But the author gives us the timeline, the back ground and the reasons for the approach used at the time. Much like Boris Jo......more

Goodreads review by Jacob on June 25, 2023

A good narrative charting the changing British intelligence establishment and its fluctuating relationship with Downing Street and respective Prime Ministers. Although this book focuses largely on the attitudes of individual PM’s structures and attitudes towards intelligence and gives details of som......more

Goodreads review by Mark on May 04, 2023

A study of the relationship between each Prime Minister since the establishment of the modern British intelligence agencies to the period of David Cameron. What comes through strikingly is that the relationship was down to the whims of those involved on any given day, and that formalisation only real......more

Quotes

‘Must read stuff. Aldrich and Cormac are inexhaustible researchers, who use a wide range of archives and include striking material from off-the-record informants. ‘The Black Door’ is a vital, authoritative book’ Richard Davenport-Hines, The Times ‘Pioneering book … a major contribution to our understanding of British prime ministers over the last century. This is one of those rare books that deserve to change the way that modern British political history is researched and written’ Christopher Andrew, Literary Review ‘A timely read’ **** Daily Express ‘This book deserves to be taken very seriously. The authors are intimately familiar with the history of the modern intelligence community’ Sunday Times ‘The first close study of relations between nineteen prime ministers and their secret service. Plenty of lively stories and characters’ The Times

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