Product Description

This book examines in detail the origins of the CIA's covert campaign and assesses its impact on the US's principal Cold War ally, Britain.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #984795 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 328 pages

From the Back Cover
During the late 1940s the newly created CIA, in a loose alliance with anti-communist intellectuals and trade unionists, launched a massive, clandestine effort to win the Cold War allegiance of the European left. Drawing on numerous personal interviews and document collections on both sides of the Atlantic, this book examines in detail the origins of the CIA's covert campaign and assesses its impact on the US's principal Cold War ally, Britain, focusing particularly on attempts to combat communist penetration of British trade unions, stimulate support within the Labour party for key American strategic aims, such as European union, and influence the politics of Bloomsbury "literati".

The results of this secret intervention were complex and far-reaching. CIA support for such ventures as the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its London-based magazine, "Encounter", subtly transformed the political culture of the British left, making it more Atlanticist and less socialist. In other ways, however, the hidden hand of American intelligence failed to control its British "assets", whose behaviour often frustrated their secretive patrons in Washington. For that matter, not even the CIA's agents on the American non-communist left proved reliable instruments of its will.

Customer Reviews

Class. Sheer class.
Anyone who has been following Hugh Wilford's literary career for the past few years knows that the Yorkshire-based bearded maestro is one of British academia's great rising talents, and this book proves the point. Wilford has clearly done all the right research and the book zips along at a cracking pace. There are perhaps a few too many long words for my liking, legacy perhaps of Wilford's training in the freak-show that is American Studies, but if there is a better book on the CIA and the British Left, I have never seen it. Two caveats: there is nothing here about the CIA during the glory days of Richard Nixon's administration, which was of course one of the high points in modern American history; and nor does the goatee-wearing Wilford say much about Operation King Stephen, one of the Agency's more shameful British adventures. However, this is, all in all, a superb book and a splendid read for bedtime or the beach. Wilford's run-ins with his bureaucratic superiors at Sheffield have been well documented in the tabloid press; they will find it hard to keep him if he carries on producing work of this quality!

The root is, indeed, man.
An excellent read, the author has produced a well researched, interesting study of the topic (so refreshing after all those racy 'coffee table' books one encounters in academia these days).

It could be argued that every British institution has its tyrant, right back to King Stephen and the English Kings of old, and the CIA was no exception to this.