''Under Every Leaf: How Britain Played the Greater Game from Afghanistan to Africa''

Book Review From Irish Times
By William Beaver Biteback, 341pp

''EVEN CLOSE TO THE apogee of its power and influence, late in the 19th century, the British Empire was remarkably fragile and its administrators apprehensive, threatened by international colonial rivalry and weakened by the internal disagreements of ill-co-ordinated government departments.

This is an exhaustively researched history of the British intelligence department – called the intelligence division from 1888 and known as the ID of the British war office – between the Crimean War and the establishment of the modern military intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 (or the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, as they are offically known).''

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