This book is the product of a lifetime spent practising and studying the art of intelligence. It should be read as a final contribution to scholarship by Michael Herman, who died in February 2021 at the age of 91. Michael is perhaps best known as the author of Intelligence Power in Peace and War, a landmark study that condensed a wealth of experience and knowledge into what arguably remains – more than a quarter of a century later – the most comprehensive account of intelligence and government in the modern world. This was followed by other publications on secret organisations and history, which confirmed Michael's place as the pre-eminent intelligence professional cum academic. When I first met Michael several years ago, I was therefore surprised to learn that he planned to write yet another book in his late eighties. As he explained to me, his earlier writings were necessarily limited by security obligations, with certain things left unsaid. The steady release of intelligence archives and the commissioning of authorised and official histories in the years since offered him a chance to revisit some issues. There was now greater scope for him to add a few personal impressions to the historical record, elaborating on his view of intelligence as a distinctive form of power exercised by governments.

The result is this collection of essays, which draws together Michael's most substantive writings with some new historical research and reflections from his professional life. These are all shaped by two ‘operational’ experiences of intelligence amid the high stakes of the Cold War: Michael's career-long focus at GCHQ with tracking and understanding its main target, the Soviet Union; and his engagement with the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) as its Secretary from 1972–5, which led to a lifelong interest in the committee and the peculiar service it provides to government. Even the more recent commentaries are grounded in Michael's appreciation of British intelligence as it developed after 1945. In that sense, this book embodies the ‘British school’ of intelligence studies, a field centred on historical perspective and inquiry, which considered Michael to be its leading figure.