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“The Last Penumbra of Empire:” Imperialism and the British Foreign Intelligence Service

Nixon Gorka

The University of Texas at Tyler

Nixon Gorka is an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Tyler studying history. Her research interests include twentieth-century American intellectual and cultural history, with a specific focus on historiography and intelligence studies.

As the Cold War came to a close, MI6 Deputy Chief Sir Gerry Warner was asked how he would describe the role of Britain’s foreign intelligence service to Queen Elizabeth II. The career intelligence officer answered rather starkly, telling the man opposite him that Britain’s foreign intelligence apparatus was “the last penumbra of empire.” This was likely the most realistic answer that Warner could have offered. From just 1945 to 1965, the British Empire went from overseeing 700 million subjects to 5 million. In the 1990s when Warner was speaking, the empire's reach was even smaller. The power Britain had at the turn of the century was no more, and British intelligence was the last vestige of a great though fallen empire. Formed specifically for the advancement and protection of British territorial possessions, the British Foreign Intelligence Service underwent great change from its conception to the end of the Cold War: morphing from a second-rate service, trusted with little more than minor surveillance operations, to the “the last penumbra” of the British Empire. However realistic this answer from Warner may have been, it was still an exaggeration. Though at the end of the Cold War MI6 formed an impressive link of intelligence sharing between Britain and its former colonies, this link was no empire. It was, instead, MI6’s depiction in popular media such as spy novels that kept the powerful British Empire— or at least the illusion of it— still alive.

Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War, and the Twilight of Empire (Abrams Press, 2013), v.
[Redacted Faculty Name], HIST 3386 Britain and Its Empire, [Redacted University Name], “The Last Gasps of Empire: Britain into the 21st Century,” Fall 2024.

BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE EMPIRE

Espionage first made an appearance in the British Isles at court. Spy work itself was the product of courtly intrigue in ancient Mesopotamia, and offered a tool by which monarchs could consolidate their power. Just as they were many years before, spies in England were used to gather information at court and influence public opinion in favor of the monarch. It wasn’t until the Tudor era that such intelligence gathering transcended the domestic sphere and into the international realm. After King Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church, historian Deigo Pirillo claims that an increased international presence was seen as necessary by the English. This showed itself in the creation of the first embassies in Venice which housed English diplomats whose jobs were to gather as much information about the international situation as possible. Pirillo explains that though diplomatic relations between Venice and England were faltering, England ran an “information network” within their embassies and Venice soon became a gateway by which England overcame its past isolationism through intelligence gathering. Through the recruitment of Italian protestant refugees as agents and informants, English diplomats were able to secure English power amidst its religious reforms and perform the first recorded instance of foreign intelligence gathering in the history of the British Empire. However, this was by no means a coordinated effort made by an organized intelligence service. Such organization would first originate under Elizabeth I. During Elizabeth’s reign the first “black operation” was conducted– the forced return of plotter John Story to England for trial–and the first British foreign intelligence service was formed. This service was under the auspices of Elizabeth’s Secretary of State Francis Walsingham who facilitated the collection, analysis, and enforcement of foreign intelligence. Though rudimentary by today's standards, the workings of Walsingham’s service were revolutionary as it utilized information networks like never before. With the help of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex and the Queen's favorite advisor until his betrayal, the fledgling foreign intelligence service used educated English travelers to collect and distribute information– creating a wide web of informants, all of whom answered to the crown.

British intelligence activities first turned their sights on empire-building in the 18th and 19th centuries as Britain itself faced immense territorial and economic expansion. Before this, English efforts at intelligence gathering were confined to court gossip, pseudo-diplomacy, and the rudimentary tactics of Walsingham– all of which were meant to solidify England’s fragile place within Europe. After the Industrial Revolution and the territorial gains derived from various colonial wars, Britain emerged as a premier global power with an empire to match. In the 18th and 19th centuries, stability derived from the advancement of empire and so foreign intelligence activities aimed to protect British imperial possessions. Intelligence was utilized by Major John André in the American Revolution to subvert the guerrilla tactics used by the colonial rebels. In the early Victorian era, domestic surveillance and industrial espionage became popularized. Edward Higgs, when discussing the 2001 TV program Victorian Spies, explains how the “Victorian culture of watchfulness” was transposed into their domestic intelligence activities which, benefitting from the expansion of the uniformed police force, collected population data and kept a watchful eye out for venereal disease. Around the same time, the British East India Company, a separate entity from the British government yet still closely intertwined, sent Robert Fortune, a botanist, to China to steal tea plants for production in British India. During this era, almost all instances of British intelligence gathering had the same objective as Fortune: to advance the economic and territorial wealth of the British empire. Like before, these efforts were not as organized as they are today. There was no centralized intelligence service to which foreign intelligence gathering was filtered through. Instead, independent entities like Major André’s military division and the British East India Company acted on their own accord for the empire. This, however, would change as the British pursuit of empire met some of its greatest challenges.

The cultivation and centralization of British intelligence were both a cause and symptom of empire-building. It was amidst the empire’s growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that British foreign intelligence as we now know it was formed. In the mid-19th century, the Sepoy Mutiny and the transfer of power in India from the British East India Company to the British government illuminated the need for increased security in regard to Britain's colonial possessions. This manifested itself in large-scale surveillance operations in both colonies and foreign countries. Though not yet overseen by a centralized intelligence service, these operations successfully surveilled potential independence movements and those with anti-colonial sentiments. An early example of this surveillance was of Hajj pilgrims from British-controlled India. According to Michael Christopher Low, the British believed that the Hajj to Mecca was a breeding ground for Pan-Islam, a movement that directly threatened English power in India. As the British could not subvert the hajj, per Queen Victoria’s 1858 proclamation of religious tolerance and noninterference, British officials used their “Victorian culture of watchfulness,” attributed to them by Edward Higgs, to familiarize themselves with potential dissenters. This surveillance would become a common theme in the British’s imperial intelligence efforts. Intelligence gathering was additionally used by the British to gather as much information as possible on the areas its military occupied. This information would then be compiled by the General Staff of the War Office into “Official Histories” used to educate colonial officials. These histories, such as the one on Somaliland published in 1907, give explanations of regional geography and culture as well as an extensive recount of past operations in the country. These efforts at surveillance and intelligence gathering, which increased in numerosity at the turn of the century, solidified the place of foreign intelligence in British governance and showcased the need for a specific government department to oversee it. In 1909 this department was finally created, and its foreign intelligence branch would later become known as the famed MI6.

In July of 1909, the Committee of Imperial Defense established the Secret Service Bureau in response to the threat the Director of Military Operations foresaw in Germany. This service was split into two sections, Home and Foreign, both united by their common goal: the protection and advancement of the great British empire. By the time war broke out on the European continent, Britain had a foreign intelligence service that matched its vast imperial possessions. Though this service would not become known as MI6 until the Great War, its actions lived up to the reputation MI6 would garner. For the first time in British history intelligence gathering for imperial defense was conducted under a centralized department. After the Great War, this department was dedicated solely to the empire’s advancement. The Foreign Secret Service expanded its reach into places like Arabia to maintain its hold on colonies like India. In Arabia specifically, the British focused their presence on strategic ports, leading to heightened imperial competition with states like Italy. According to Jessie Gilchrist in his article “‘The Veil of Mystery:’ Imperial Intelligence in the Arabian Peninsula,” during the interwar years, this competition came to a boiling point and, as a result, “intelligence networks emerged as the primary instrument for managing the precocity and fragility of the spheres of influence understanding between the British and the Italians” in Arabia. Gilchrist also points out a trend started in Arabia in regard to British foreign intelligence: that imperial authorities were more focused on competition and surveillance than establishing successful colonial rule. Beyond Arabia, this would be the case for many colonies where the British would focus so intently on maintaining the territory that the governance of the colonial people was often neglected. Though the British presence in Arabia is tainted, as Gilchrist suggests, by glorification and romance brought about by stories of those like T. E. Lawrence, British intelligence activities in the region are nevertheless accurately representative of a growing centralized service in the interwar period with its sights set only on empire.

The Second World War would hinder these trends in imperial British intelligence gathering, while also shaping and building the service we are familiar with today. It was during this time that the foreign intelligence service’s short-hand name, MI6, was popularized, and it was in the post-war period that British intelligence operations truly solidified. Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME), a branch of the British intelligence apparatus, was created during WWII to ensure the security of the Allies in the Middle Eastern theater and continued its operation post-1945 in an effort to protect British imperial interests such as the Suez Canal. According to historian Chikara Hashimoto, as the Cold War brewed, the efforts of SIME showcased British worries about Nationalist movements in relation to the emerging Cold War. Having to face extremism and terrorism like never before, the British chose to focus on the protection of their own assets, such as their military stationed in the Middle East and minimizing subversion, either in the form of nationalists or Soviet agents. British foreign intelligence gathering had become a reactive endeavor, responding to threats rather than making them. As seen with SIME, the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War opened a new front for British intelligence gathering. The game of intelligence, which was once one-sided for the British and completely focused on the advancement of the empire, was now turned to its maintenance. British intelligence was now on the defensive.

Diego Pirillo, “Espionage and Theology in the Anglo-Venetian Renaissance,” Mediterranean Studies 25, no. 1 (2017): 57, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/mediterraneanstu.25.1.0053.
Pirillo, “Espionage and Theology,” 57-8.
Pirillo, “Espionage and Theology,” 61.
Ronald Pollitt, “The Abduction of Doctor John Story and the Evolution of Elizabethan Intelligence Operations,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 14, no. 2 (1983): 140, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2539942.

Robert Hutchinson, Elizabeth’s Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War that Saved England, (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007), 17, Google Books.
Elizabeth Williamson, “‘Fishing after News’ and the Ars Apodemica: The Intelligencing Role of the Educational Traveler in the Late Sixteenth Century.” News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham, (2016), 554, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h1ng.30.
Edward Higgs, “Victorian Spies,” History Workshop Journal, no. 53 (2002): 233, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4289782.

Bianca Maria Rinaldi, ed, “Robert Fortune (1813–80),” In Ideas of Chinese Gardens: Western Accounts, 1300-1860, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18z4g4h.32.

Michael Christopher Low, “Empire and the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam under British Surveillance, 1865-1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 2 (2008): 282, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30069613.
Low, “Empire and the Hajj,” 282.
Africa IOR/L/MIL/17/17/8/1, 1867-1922, MS, Selected India Office Records on Colonial Africa: Selected India Office Records on Colonial Africa, British Library. Nineteenth Century Collections Online (accessed September 24, 2024),

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/AOXNRG317494365/GDCS?u=txshracd2605&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=ebae86cb&pg=1.

Jessi A. J. Gilchrist, “‘The Veil of Mystery:’ Imperial Intelligence in the Arabian Peninsula,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 52, no.1 (2023), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2023.2240093.
Gilchrist, “‘The Veil of Mystery.’”

Chikara Hashimoto, “Fighting the Cold War or Post-Colonialism? Britain in the Middle East from 1945 to 1958: Looking Through the Records of the British Security Service,” The International History Review 36, no. 1 (2014): 30, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24701307.
Hashimoto, “Fighting the Cold War or Post-Colonialism?” 30.

IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE DEFENSE: THE COLD WAR

The British intelligence archives, released starting in 1992 as a result of the Waldegrave Initiative, paint a stark difference between British intelligence activities before and after the Second World War. Before the war, the archives are filled with stories of grandeur and the advancement of a glistening empire. After 1945, the archives show a service defined by fear, reactivity, and doing its best to maintain its hold on world order. Calder Walton’s book Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War, and the Twilight of Empire makes use of these archives to form the first scholarly study of post-war British Intelligence in relation to empire. In his book, Walton explains the integral role that British intelligence played in post-war decolonization, claiming that the services formed decolonization’s “frontline” and “helped to transform the empire into the commonwealth.” However present intelligence matters were in decolonization, Walton maintains that the Cold War was the largest driver in the period, and defined both British intelligence and decolonization alike.

The end of WWII ushered in a new era where self-determination reigned supreme amidst growing global tensions. Britain was left devastated by the war, and its empire was in no place to fight both anti-colonialism at home and the Soviet threat abroad. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Britain didn’t try to maintain their crumbling empire. Released intelligence records reveal the British preoccupation with communist and nationalist movements, both of which were seen as similar and even interchangeable by Western authorities. One file details a list compiled by colonial authorities of all “proscribed or prohibited” organizations in British colonies. These organizations included Communist organizations, “youth” organizations, and organized crime syndicates, often referred to in the file as “secret societies.” Additionally, the released archives detail the surveillance of personalities like John La Rose, a writer, civil rights proponent, and anti-colonial activist, by the British intelligence services. Though La Rose was once a member of the West Indian Independence Party, he was never sympathetic to the Soviet cause as suspected and the only threat he posed to Britain was to its empire and the inequalities seen within it. This focus is likely the direct result of the 1955 Report on Colonial Security, also known as the “Templer Report” named after its author Gerald Templer, a man known for his role in the Malayan Emergency. According to Walton, the report recommended that “colonial administrations should attach much greater importance to intelligence matters” and linked the Cold War to colonial security. The preoccupation with nationalist and anti-colonial movements in British intelligence gathering was therefore the product of Cold War fears about communism.

However justified these efforts may have been in terms of Cold War geopolitics, at least to the people conducting them, such surveillance and micro-managing did little to quell calls for independence and self-determination. And so Britain and its leaders had to choose between empire and survival. With the Soviet Union on the rise, they decided to prioritize the latter, in spite of the proposed link between Cold War and colonial security. Though Britain's choice to give in under the strength of decolonization, and even help guide it along, may seem progressive at first glance, British colonial actions in the post-war period were not without hidden intentions. In 1947 and 1948 when Britain faced the loss of its Indian and Middle Eastern Colonies, colonial and intelligence authorities decided to acquiesce. This is what would happen for many of the British colonies who declared independence in the 20th century. To an untrained eye, the British empire might seem to have disappeared by its own choice. The truth, however, was that it was now only hidden. Though British colonial authorities allowed and even aided decolonization, the British intelligence services ensured British influence remained below the surface of newly independent nations. The Cold War was a conflict that changed the meaning of empire, shifting the focus from land and resources to spheres of influence, and therefore changed the game of foreign intelligence for the British. British intelligence resources could no longer focus on building or maintaining an empire, rather they had to work towards creating strong relationships between Britain and its soon-to-be former colonies. Britain ensured its dominance in these newly independent states by using signals intelligence (SIGINT) to aid its withdrawal, training local police forces, establishing post-colonial intelligence networks, and cultivating intelligence liaisons, otherwise known as Security Liaison Officers (SLOs). In establishing these measures before their withdrawal, the British formed a solid foundation for post-decolonization intelligence sharing that maintained their influence in an ever-changing world. It was these networks that upheld MI6’s long-held view as one of the best foreign intelligence services in the world and gave the guise of the empire years after its decline.

In the 1990s MI6 Deputy Chief Sir Gerry Warner called the service he had dedicated his life’s work to the “last penumbra of empire.” British intelligence was indeed one of the last strings that held the once vast British empire together, but its actions and networks weren’t the only things that made this true. Though Walton only touches base on the subject briefly, British intelligence’s clandestine activities were not the only tools associated with it in the service of the empire. Its perception in popular culture, most specifically British literature, continued to foster the illusion of a still great empire, an illusion that is maintained in spy stories and popular memory today and pushes the British foreign intelligence service into a fictional league of its own.

Walton, Empire of Secrets, V.
Organizations proscribed or prohibited in colonial territories,January 1-December 31, 1956, MS CO 1035/131, Colonial Office: CO 1035: Intelligence and Security Departments: Registered Files (ISD Series), The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom), Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence (accessed September 24, 2024),

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/FWNLCY569350919/TCBI?u=omni&sid=bookmark-TCBI&xid=2c7d43c0&pg=18.

Security Liaison Officer, Trinidad: security reviews of Eastern Caribbean and British Guiana, January 1, 1955-December 31, 1956, MS CO 1035/16, Colonial Office: CO 1035: Intelligence and Security Departments: Registered Files (ISD Series). The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom), Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence (accessed September 24, 2024),

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/FLOVNP775419264/TCBI?u=omni&sid=bookmark-TCBI&xid=8c331b2c&pg=31.
Maya Bello-Taylor, “John La Rose - Was a Writer, Publisher & Political Organiser Who Changed the Lives of Black Britons,” IBHM-UK, October 10, 2022, https://www.ibhm-uk.org/post/john-la-rose-was-a-writer-publisher-political-organiser-who-changed-the-lives-of-black-britons.
Walton, Empire of Secrets, 140.

Walton, Empire of Secrets, V.
Walton, Empire of Secrets, V.

INTELLIGENCE AND EMPIRE IN THE CULTURE CONSCIOUSNESS

Like military and intelligence activities, popular culture was an important and persuasive tool used to grow, protect, and maintain the British empire. Though books could not achieve the tangible goals of war and territorial expansion, their reach surpassed what any military could accomplish. In depicting fictional actions of British intelligence services, British spy novels in turn cultivated the “myth” of British Intelligence in the Western cultural consciousness. They upheld the illusion of a functioning and stable empire, even when the reality was far from it.

The British spy novel first found its foundations in what Ted Beardow calls the “empire hero.” In his article, Beardow explores the concept of an empire hero, a British gentleman defending the empire abroad, in Victorian and Edwardian adventure literature. This hero, he claims, “tends to manifest an upper-class perception of responsibility for English society, as well as a degree of racism and a feeling of superiority over less privileged persons.” The military values and violent masculine behaviors of these protagonists were, according to Beardow, “seen as necessary and appropriate for males as defenders of the imperial order—especially in the more exotic, “uncivilized” areas on the frontiers of the empire.” The adventure novel’s “empire hero,” therefore, represented the standard for British masculinity in the era of empire and painted a picture of British superiority and stability in its imperial endeavors.

Though Beardow points out that not all early British spy novels included an “empire hero,” many of their protagonists took inspiration from them. In Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, for example– an early fixture in British spy literature– Kimball O’Hara uses his street smarts to take on Russian influence in British India. The British spy novel, like the British adventure novel, was first popularized at the height of the British empire and led to a genre so popular that it even influenced governmental legislation, such as when Le Queux’s Spies of the Kaiser stoked so much public fear over foreign agents that it led to the creation of the 1911 Official Secrets Act. David A. T. Stafford describes the British spy novel’s protagonist in a similar way to Beardow’s “empire hero” saying that he formed a “symbol of stability in response … to fundamental changes in the nature of Britain's place within the international system.” Kipling’s Kim proves a good example of this as it depicts a British spy solidifying Britain’s hold on its Asian empire through intelligence gathering and subversion. Like the “empire hero,” spy protagonists like Kimball O’Hara maintain the rugged and adaptable qualities of the “empire hero” while engaging in “the great game” of colonial espionage. They reflected the sustained connection between empire and masculinity, the general xenophobia of the time, and the illusion of stability in times of change. Spy novels, therefore, have been political, if not imperial, tools from their inception.

Though at the end of Beardow’s essay he claims that as the British empire declined in the twentieth century, so did the “empire hero,” it can be argued that instead the “empire hero” underwent change. Both the World Wars and the Cold War fundamentally changed the nature of empire and, as it did for foreign intelligence activities, changed the depiction of empire in literature. The “empire hero” was a tool crafted to suit the needs of its time and, as times changed, so did it. Therefore, by the mid-twentieth century the “empire hero” perhaps had not disappeared but simply morphed into the British spy hero who advanced and protected the empire, just in a different way. This is exemplified most clearly in Ian Fleming’s books about a dashing British intelligence officer named James Bond.

The James Bond novels are situated within a period of British imperial decline. Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), was published on the coattails of the Indian and Palestinian partitions. Likely Fleming’s most famous book, From Russia With Love (1957), came out after the Suez Crisis and his later Bond novels were published amidst the loss of Briain’s African possessions. Bond is historically significant, not just because of his immense popularity, but because of the context in which his narrative occupies. In the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in which agent 007 is tasked with bankrupting and ultimately defeating a well-placed Soviet agent, this is especially the case. Christine Berberich, in her article “Putting England Back on Top? Ian Fleming, James Bond, and the Question of England,” argues that Fleming’s Casino Royale was a response to the defection of the Cambridge Spies in 1951. Much like the effect 9/11 had on the American Intelligence Services, the reveal and defection of the Cambridge Spy network, a group of Soviet double agents within the British intelligence apparatus, largely discredited MI6 in the eyes of the public. Fleming, a former intelligence officer himself, thus took it upon himself to return British intelligence to its rightful public glory through fiction. In depicting a British superspy such as Bond, he was able to ensure the perceived stability and superiority of British intelligence in the Western popular consciousness. Fleming’s novels don’t just respond to the Cambridge Spies, but also to the demise of traditional imperialism and the Cold War as a whole. Berberich states that the novels “reflect the confusion of a time of widespread and rapid change” and show “an awareness of waning British influence in the world while also trying to maintain the myth of British — and here, particularly English — superiority.” Furthermore, the Bond novels depict the triumph of Western capitalism in the face of the Cold War, and they additionally respond to the demise of the British Empire by reinventing it as an empire of secrets, with Bond at its helm.

One of the facets by which Bond forms such an ideological statement is through his displays of misogyny and masculinity. James Bond, like many other spy novel heroes, upholds the hyper-masculinity that is seen in Beardow’s “empire hero” which was considered necessary for the advancement of the empire and the maintenance of British superiority. The Bond novels (and films) are known for their masculine values and poor treatment of women. Fleming’s Casino Royale makes clear Bond’s misogyny with his stated belief that women should be kept to the domestic sphere— or, in his words, to their “pots and pans”— and his often violent sexualization of the women around him. Berberich claims in her article that these displays are not simple comments on gender, but political in nature as well. As they were in the narratives of the “empire hero,” masculinity and gender norms were tools used by spy novelists to reinforce their overarching arguments. Berberich believes that this is the case in Casino Royale as she interprets Bond’s misogynistic treatment of Vesper, a woman he is forced to work with though ultimately betrays him, as a symbolic triumph over wavering British nationalism.

It is in ways like these that the James Bond novels can, in Berberich’s words, “construct an imaginary world in which the Pax Britannica still operates.” When the British empire was crumbling one colony at a time, the world of Bond assured that all was okay underneath the surface. That with a great foreign intelligence service, with great agents like Bond in its ranks, the Britain known for its influence, power, and strength would be maintained in the face of decolonization and the Soviet threat. As the history of the British intelligence services show, this was in some cases true. Despite the loss of its territorial colonies, Britain was able to maintain the commonwealth and an expansive intelligence network that is still in operation today. However, the myth brought forward by Fleming’s Bond and its fellow spy novels inevitably falls short. The great British intelligence service depicted in these novels was still serving a great empire— one that was and is no longer in existence.

From the inception of the so-called “empire hero” and the British spy novel, these narratives were used to build the illusion of stability in a changing world. From Kipling’s Kim to Fleming’s Casino Royale, they accomplished this. The objective of the “empire hero” survived the changes of the early twentieth century by changing with it. By Fleming’s time, there was no empire to glorify and sustain, but rather a past to cling to. In the James Bond novels and the film franchise that was born of them, this illusory past is made real in an effort to provide stability in a time filled by questions. If nothing else, these narratives attempted to convince their audience that one thing could be sure: British intelligence could be counted on, even after the fall of the very thing they were made to protect.

The British foreign intelligence service, for its entire history, has been directly linked to empire. From its hazy beginnings in Venetian embassies to its Cold War preoccupation with independence movements, British intelligence gathering had been solely done in service of the empire. Even after Britania had been reduced to a fraction of its size by 1965, MI5 and MI6 sought to make an empire of secrets to replace the one they had lost. “The last penumbra of empire” are the words that MI6 deputy chief Sir Gerry Warner used to describe this secret empire as the Cold War came to a close. What Warner failed to account for in describing the modern role of Britain’s foreign intelligence service is the place it held within the collective popular consciousness. Through its depiction in popular spy novels like those of Bond, British intelligence has been able to live within a collective public imaginary; one in which the past was recreated and British intelligence went beyond the last penumbra of empire and became the empire itself.

Ted Beardow, “The Empire Hero,” Studies in Popular Culture 41, no. 1 (2018): 67, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26582197.
Beardow, “The Empire Hero,” 76.

David A. T. Stafford, “Spies and Gentlemen: The Birth of the British Spy Novel, 1893-1914,” Victorian Studies 24, no. 4 (1981): 499, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3827226.
Stafford, “Spies and Gentlemen,” 491.

Christine Berberich, “Putting England Back on Top? Ian Fleming, James Bond, and the Question of England,” The Yearbook of English Studies 42 (2012): 14, https://doi.org/10.5699/yearenglstud.42.2012.0013.
Berberich, “Putting England Back on Top?” 23.

Berberich, “Putting England Back on Top?” 26.

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