Date: Thursday 15 October 2009
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Professor Christopher Andrew
Chair: Professor Arne Westad

For the first time, the British Security Service to mark the centenary of its foundation has opened its archives to an independent historian - Christopher Andrew. He will be at LSE to speak about his book, The Defence of the Realm. The book reveals the precise role of the Security Service in twentieth-century British history, from its foundation by Captain Kell of the British Army in October 1909, through two world wars, up to and including its present roles in counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. The book describes how MI5 has been managed, what its relationship has been with government, where it has triumphed and where it has failed. In all of this no restriction has been placed on the judgements made by the author..

Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge University and the world's leading scholar of intelligence history. He is also chair of the British Intelligence Study Group, co-editor of Intelligence and National Security, former Visiting Professor at Harvard, Toronto and the Australian National University, and a regular presenter of BBC Radio and TV documentaries. His thirteen previous books include The Mitrokhin Archive, and a number of path-breaking studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history.

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