Drawn from five countries - Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - the Five Eyes has been steeped in secrecy since its formation in 1956, its existence only publicly acknowledged as recently as 2010. On the one hand, it is an alliance held together by a common language and cause, whose successes range from the takedown of atomic spies in the 1940s to the exposure of Russian collusion in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. On the other hand, however, the Five Eyes’ very existence is not legally binding - it functions as a marriage of convenience riddled with distrust, competing intelligence agendas and a massive imbalance of power that favours the United States.

Yet until now, there has been no book detailing its long and complex history. The Secret History of the Five Eyes is a character-led narrative that weaves together accounts spanning eight decades - from stories of codebreakers in the Second World War, to the latest Russian threats to Western democracy and the trade conflict between the US and China which have reshaped national security. Drawing on interviews with intelligence officials and recently declassified archives to reveal authoritative but unauthorised stories, the author, himself an expert in international intelligence and security, bypasses the usual censorship channels to give a definitive account of the Western world’s most powerful but least known intelligence alliance.

Impeccably researched over many years, and including hitherto unpublished interviews with numerous influential players, The Secret History of the Five Eyes is both a tale of spies and spying, and a major contribution to the literature of international relations in an increasingly dangerous world.