James Scott writes:

Thomas has thoroughly plundered the French and British archives, revealing the Byzantine squabbles between the branches of the intelligence agencies in, say, Mandate Palestine or the Maghreb; and he analyses in forensic detail quarrels between those on the ground in Cairo or Algiers and the military brass, the police and the local civil bureaucracy, not to mention the ministries at home. The lists of reports, minutes, rebuttals, proposals and complaints in Empires of Intelligence can seem endless, but it’s good to be reminded that intelligence agencies are, above all, report-writing factories staffed by clever and imaginative clerks.

(LRB 9 October 2008)

California | hardback 428 pp. |ISBN: 9780520251175