Strange Intelligence

Strange Intelligence is the story of Hector Bywater, perhaps the British secret service's finest agent operating in Germany before the First World War. Although British, he was working at the time as a journalist for the New York Herald and would later write for the Daily Telegraph. Mansfield Cumming, the first 'C' (or head of what would become MI6), recruited Bywater and gave him the designation 'H2O', in what was a rather obvious play on his name. Not quite 007, the charming, courageous Bywater was probably as close to the popular image of James Bond as any British secret agent ever came. Bywater's main role was collecting intelligence on naval installations in northern Germany ahead of the First World War. During the war itself he operated against German saboteurs on the US East Coast. His experiences were originally written up in a series of articles in the Daily Telegraph in 1930 and a year later, with the help of Daily Express journalist H. C. Ferraby, were turned into this book, which translates Bywater's espionage experiences into a rollicking tale of the secret service. The identities of all of the British spies carrying out the missions in Strange Intelligence are disguised but most of them are Bywater himself. His book is a true classic of espionage, featuring Boys' Own tales of derring-do, deceiving the enemy to gather vital intelligence on German naval capabilities ahead of a war in which the Royal Navy was to be put to its sternest test since Trafalgar. That the navy survived at all is largely down to intelligence gathered by Bywater and his fellow agents.