The British Monarchy and the History of Secret Intelligence
BOOK REVIEW: CROWN, CLOAK, AND DAGGER: THE BRITISH MONARCHY AND SECRET INTELLIGENCE FROM VICTORIA TO ELIZABETH II
by Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac / Georgetown University Press
Reviewed by Jean-Thomas Nicole
The Reviewer —Jean-Thomas Nicole is a Policy Advisor with Public Safety Canada. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official policies or positions of Public Safety Canada or the Canadian government.
REVIEW — If I’m totally honest, I must admit that I started reading Crown, Cloak, and Dagger the British Monarchy and Secret Intelligence from Victoria to Elizabeth II by Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac with the unhealthy, enthusiastic, sometimes bordering on the voyeuristic, curiosity of the average royal gossip magazine reader and half a condescending smirk on my face: what was I going to learn that I did not already suspect?
My French-Canadian origins and upbringing can explain this historical, even civilizational, negative bias; in my Quebec family household we indeed used to sing traditionally for the health of the French king of old while we kicked the English queen in the outhouse (if not worse…) for having declared war on our ancestors. Similarly, in my youth, I also remember gleefully singing about the early marital misfortunes of Charles and Diana in mid-eighties France, thanks to the catchy pop-rock of Niagara.
However, I was in for a positive surprise. I should have known better given the credentials of both the authors. Mr. Richard J. Aldrich is a professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Warwick University and author of, among others important books on British foreign policy, secret intelligence and political influence (some adversaries would called it foreign interference…), GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency (2010); Spying on the World: The Declassified Documents of the Joint Intelligence Committee, 1936-2013 (2014), The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers (2017). Further, he is a regular commentator on war and espionage and has written for all the major British newspapers.
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Mr. Rory Cormac is a Professor of International Relations specializing in secret intelligence and covert action at the University of Nottingham. He has authored noteworthy books on these themes, most notably: Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (2018) and How to Stage a Coup: And Ten Other Lessons from the World of Secret Statecraft (2022).
Alongside Aldrich, he has researched and fronted two documentaries for Channel 4 (BBC): Spying on the Royals (2017) and D-Day: The King who Fooled Hitler (2019). Cormac has spoken at the UK Cabinet Office, Home Office, and Ministry of Defence, as well as the US State Department and Pentagon.
Thus, quite interestingly, convincingly, and informatively, Crown, Cloak, and Dagger put in historical light and context around the secret relationship or partnership between the royals and the British intelligence services (MI5, MI6, GCHQ). Therefore, according to Aldrich and Cormac:
“Their journeys are intertwined; their histories are entangled. The monarch – even the monarchy itself – would not survive without intelligence. Meanwhile, the secret services have long been shaped by forces of the crown. This book argues that modern intelligence grew out of persistent attempts to assassinate Victoria and then operated on a private and informal basis, drawing on close personal relationships between senior spies, the aristocracy, and the monarchy.”
If we follow the authors’ narrative, they argue and demonstrate with great literary style and rhythm, solid archival evidence, and interviews of insiders that, over time, this relationship “has evolved into something rather unusual, from informal and personal to something more formal, with a real role for seniors royals,” remaining thus significant even in today’s era of constitutional monarchy.
Along the way, we learn how the monarchy directly shaped intelligence. As we have mentioned before, attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria stimulated the creation and growth of Special Branch, Britain’s undercover police unit often dealing with national security matters. Ever since, intelligence has maintained an important function of keeping the monarch alive.
We also learn how access to intelligence has enabled kings and queens to intervene in foreign and security policy. In that respect, the best pages of the book are probably the ones dealing with Russia: Britain’s likely involvement in Rasputin’s murder, the bloody and cruel aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution for the tsar and his family, and the huge lengths to which the British royals went to suppress the ambiguous implication of King George V in the tragic Romanov episode.
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At the outbreak of World War II, the chapter on the abdication of Edward VIII shows how frighteningly close England came to having no differences and no war at all with Hitler’s Germany, had the former remained on the throne as king. For the Fuhrer, monarchical politics was indeed mistakenly seen as central to manipulating Britain. Fortunately, George VI, the royals and the spies went to war. The king “eventually acquired inside knowledge of the wizard war that would gradually turn the tide against the Axis. The king knew all the secrets in the land….”
Then came Elizabeth II, continuing the close relationship through four decades of the Cold War. The royal diplomacy, while subtle, would then become an efficient tool in the state arsenal to counter British imperial decline, oversee the transition to Commonwealth, and maintain influence on the global stage (notably through arms sales).
Summing up their whole argument, Aldrich and Cormac conclude by questioning the real influence of the monarchy. For them, it is “more influential than many assume. There is far more to the crown than the pomp and pageantry for which it is famous around the world. The monarch is more than a gilded sponge, soaking up events as they unfold around them.”
Reading Aldrich and Cormac, we, readers from the outside, from the peripheries looking in, are allowed to catch an elusive and fascinating glimpse at the underlying and ambivalent nature of power in Britain: its continuity, symbols, representations and manifestations; in that sense, the security of the monarch is firstly highly political and human, dare we say incarnated?
The authors remind us, rightly, that it needs to appear visible and accessible for the institution to survive. As Queen Elizabeth II was fond of saying, “I have to be seen to be believed”. Intelligence allowed her to be seen safely. It kept the legend of the monarchy alive, perpetuating an illusion of power, popularity, and divine protection.
Secondly, conversely, and paradoxically, the United Kingdom is not a democracy; it is a constitutional monarchy, specifically a collective monarchy, which consisted of officials and permanent secretaries, while elected ministers could only shift policy slightly, and only if that is acceptable to the collective Crown… But surely, we knew that all along, didn’t we?
Crown, Cloak and Dagger earns a prestigious Four out of Four Trench Coats
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