West, Nigel. The Circus: MI5 Operations 1945-1972. New York: Stein and Day, 1984. 334 pages.

Nigel West, also known as Rupert Allason, is a British writer specializing in intelligence and security issues. Despite a pro- government bias that caused Allason to condemn the naming of names in 1985, up until then he had probably named more British intelligence officers than anyone. The son of a Tory MP, Allason ran for parliament himself as a Thatcher Conservative in 1986.

"The reader will notice that there are now half a dozen blank spaces in the organizational charts," writes Allason in his introduction to The Circus. A senior MI5 officer stole his manuscript in 1982 and obtained an injunction against publication. But by then the manuscript had already reached U.S. publishers, so British censors were willing to negotiate. Even with the deletions, one has to agree with Allason that "this final version of The Circus is the most detailed account of MI5's work ever published, or ever likely to be."
ISBN 0-8128-8071-4

Extract the names from this source

Back to search page