There’s plenty going on in August here at Biteback – we have new additions to our Provocations and Dialogue Espionage Classics series, the Political Book Awards 2015 Polemic of the Year returning in paperback, and a fascinating and insightful history of the most unique branch to have existed in the Metropolitan Police.
By Henry Landau
The latest instalment in the Dialogue Espionage Classics series, The Spy Net illuminates the extraordinary extent of Britain’s spies in Belgium, France and Germany during the First World War. Captain Henry Landau was recruited into the British secret service to run a group of more than a thousand agents who monitored the movement of German troop trains to and from the Western Front. It was arguably the most effective intelligence operation of the First World War and, according to the chief of the secret service, produced 70 per cent of all Allied intelligence on the German forces.
By Geoffrey Robertson QC
Winner of the Paddy Power Political Book Awards 2015 Polemic of the Year. At the centenary of the deaths of over a million Armenian people, renowned human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson seeks to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the horrific events in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constitute the crime against humanity that is today known as genocide. This paperback edition includes a new chapter deploring the hypocrisy of Britain and the United States, who refuse to recognise the genocide, rather than risk alienating their NATO ally.
By Ray Wilson & Ian Adams
The first complete history of the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police, from its formation in 1883 until it was subsumed into the Counter-Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police in 2006. The book reveals the astounding missions, life-saving efforts and intelligence-gathering of the men and women of ‘the Branch’, and demonstrates the unique place it inhabited between MI5 and the police.
By Frederic Raphael
The Provocations series continues to highlight the most vital discussions in society today. In Anti-Semitism, Oscar-winning screenwriter and novelist Frederic Raphael reflects upon two millennia of Jewish persecution, from the Enlightenment to more recent developments in anti-Jewish feeling. This ambitious and powerful polemic illuminates why the Jewish community has been subjugated to violence for so long, but also why the religion continues to flourish.