H. B Lyle

"London 1909: The British Empire spans the globe, seen as an invulnerable imperial power. But Captain Vernon Kell, head of counter-intelligence at the War Office, knows better. In Russia, there is revolution in the wind; in Germany, an arms race; and in London, the streets are alive with foreign agents provocateur. Kell wants to set up a Secret Service, an agency with a mandate to act domestically and abroad to protect the Empire, but to convince...

"In 1910 London, Captain Vernon Kell's fledgling secret intelligence service faces being shut down before it has even begun its job of saving the British Empire from German and Russian spies. Harassed by politicians like the ambitious Winston Churchill, bullied by Special Branch, undermined by his colleague's ill-advised foreign ventures, and alarmed at his wife's involvement with militant suffragettes, Kell is making no progress in tracking high-profile...