Description: This is an unusual book, telling a story which has hitherto remained hidden from history: the surveillance by the British security service MI5 of anti-Nazi refugees who came to Britain fleeing political persecution in Germany and Austria. Based on the personal and organisational files that MI5 kept on political refugees during the 1930s and 1940s - which have only recently been released into the public domain - this study also fills a considerable gap in historical research. Telling a story of absorbing interest, which at times reads more like spy fiction, it is both a study of MI5 and of the political refugees themselves. The book will interest academics in the fields of history, politics, intelligence studies, Jewish studies, German studies and migration studies; but it is also accessible to the general reader interested in Britain before, during and after the Second World War.
Brief description: Charmian Brinson is Professor of German Studies at Imperial College, London
Review Quotes:
"Given the wealth of literature that has appeared in recent decades on the victims of Nazism, it is now rare indeed for a book on the refugees from Hitler in Britain to open up to its readers an almost completely unexplored area of that history. Yet this is the case with Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove's study, A Matter of Intelligence: MI5 and the Surveillance of Anti-Nazi Refugees, 1933-1950"
(Anthony Grenville, Association of Jewish Refugees Journal, July 2014) "An immaculately researched study" (Nicholas Jacobs, Camden New Journal, 10/07/2014)