authoritative history

entertaining and well read history..pacy and all encompassing ..as usual one is aghast at how traitors who damaged this country are allowed to get away scot free..finger as ever point at Roger Hollis as being a traitor ( an auadable version of 'spycatcher ' long overdue)

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Mispronunciations galore

Most foreign words and names are mispronounced, sometimes very confusingly and always irritatingly. Please record another version!

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Thorough

This is a work of monumental scholarship ranging from Moses to the post-9/11 world. At some 36 hours in length, it is not for the faint-hearted and I decided to break off in the middle and refresh the palate with the sorbet of a short novel (Ian McEwan's Nutshell in an excellent narration by Rory Kinnear) so that I could return with renewed vigour to Christopher Andrews thorough revealing of the world of intelligence. Like any book of its span, you'll learn about a lot more than the world of intelligence along the way - no spoilers...
Towards the end, I suddenly wondered why there was no mention of the Lockerbie bombing (Pan Am Flight 103) from 1988 and it altered occurred to me that, at the time of writing, the subject matter may well still have been under the UK's 30-year rule. What led me to this supposition was that later events were covered, but not UK ones.
There are many errors of editing in this work - most in the form of repeated sentences - an easy mistake to make during editing. I'd encourage potential listeners to grin and bear it. Think of the time and cost of editing the average music CD which, at the most, lasts 80 minutes. This book around 27 times that length.
I've since bought Christopher Andrew's Defence of the Realm - the official history of MI5 and am looking forward to reading that.

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Heavy at times but quality research

Incredible detail in this book tracing the development and history intelligence over centuries.

At time’s it is a challenge as it is so detailed but any student of intelligence will want this as an essential guide and reliable reference book.

Surprised to see so little in the UK period of 1970s - 2010s onwards though. The development of intelligence against terrorism in NI or Soviet counter intelligence might have have added some immediacy to readers.

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Editing poor

Very interesting. The author has a few phrases that he rather mechanically comes back to again and again which i felt could have been better written. Not very well edited.

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Interesting book, terrible recording!

The Secret World is an interesting history of the world told from the perspective of intelligence through the ages. Written well generally (Some links to historical events are a bit tenuously linked to spying, especially in the ancient world) this audiobook is let down by its recording.
The narrator is competent, doing well with some very tricky international and multilingual names and phases, but is inconsistent in the basics. He will pause for breath in the middle of a sentence then carry on as if it's a new one. He does accents occasionally, American and English mostly, but then forgets other times, so that, for example, not all American quotes are done in an American accent.
However, the worst thing about this recording is the sound. Due to the fact that the narrator is inconsistent there have, obviously, been a lot of retakes. These sound like they were recorded on a different day, in a different building, with different equipment and the microphone inserted up the narrator's nostril. SO inconsistent is the sound that I often had to adjust the volume on my headphones to save blasting my eardrums. Also, they haven't even edited in the retakes competently, regularly getting repeated sentences or part sentences, sometimes with the misspronounciation included.
This amateurish production almost ruined what was otherwise a fascinating study and is not what I would expect from an Audible recording.

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1 person found this helpful

An in depth history told compellingly

I really enjoyed this book. It's less a history of secret intelligence and more a re-telling of major historical events with an emphasis on the role of secret intelligence (or, lack thereof) in those events - often completely altering our hitherto taken-for-granted understanding of those events and offering fresh insight. The narration is excellent, though there are a few editing blips as other reviewers have mentioned (hence 4 stars rather than 5). This is necessarily a very long book and takes many detours along the way, which in my opinion only adds to the intrigue and compelling narrative. It would be helpful to have a basic understanding of major world historical events prior to reading, but not essential. Overall I would highly recommend this to anyone interested not just in secret intelligence but in world history in general. A fascinating, informative and insightful piece of non-fiction.

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comprehensive

A good overview of the intelligence through the ages. it has some very interesting fact that definitely force the reflection on today's world.
Only criticism is the massive emphasis on code breaking which is key for intelligence but not the only component of it.

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thorough history

you need to stay with it - it's long, has a lot of acronyms, but very very interesting

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a great explanation of intelligence over millenia

really enjoyed the explanation of how nations build and use intelligence gathering systems and how well they are able to use them.

couple of Germans words like Dienst could be better read but accents were really good.

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