My Family and Other Spies

Did you know him? a priest asked me when I first visited my fathers impressive marble tomb in Bosnia.

I gave an honest answer No, I cant say I really knew him at all.
It was a view shared by the former head of the Secret Intelligence Services anti-Soviet operations. I dont suppose well ever really know the truth about J.B. Wood? he told me. But he thought I had a better chance of finding out than most.

After all, most of my family had at one time or another been with SIS, my mother one of only a handful of female agents to have operated behind the lines in post-war Berlin. I had grown up within the perimeter of a specialist SIS training camp, surrounded by some of the most senior - and colourful - characters in the Services history.

So began a personal, insiders investigation into the life - or lives - of one of SIS's more unlikely, if highly regarded, officers. And, in an admittedly crowded field, one of its most duplicitous . . .