‘Waspish, quick-witted, and eloquent’, advanced praise for our latest Hugh Trevor-Roper book. 

At the end of the month we publish The Secret World: Behind the Curtain of British Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War, chronicling Hugh Trevor-Roper’s experiences working for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), edited by Edward Harrison. However, over the weekend we had a bit of pre-release buzz with reviews in the Spectator and Sunday Times.

Described as a ‘fascinating collection’ by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Spectator, Iain Finlayson praised The Secret World in his review for the Sunday Times because of the mutual disdain and distrust that is on show between Trevor-Roper and the intelligence services:

‘As a writer whose postwar expertise on the Cold War was fed by inside information from the intelligence services, historian Trevor-Roper was always waspish, quick-witted, and eloquent. In this collection of politically calculated book reviews, cleverly indiscreet correspondence, and creatively controversial memoirs, he reveals the infighting and power-broking within the intelligence services. He reflects on traitors such as Kim Philby, the paranoid Peter Wright who believed Roger Hollis, director-general of MI5, to be a spy, and the mythical career of Noël Coward as a secret agent.’

Read the Spectator‘s review in full on their website, and the Sunday Times review too if you’re a subscriber.

The Secret World follows a collection of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s diaries, The Wartime Journals, published in 2011. ■