Come and join us for Tim Willasey-Wilsey's book launch of The Spy and the Devil
Invite only: Get in touch to request a spaceEvent description:
Tim Willasey-Wilsey will be in conversation with Gill Bennett on his new book, 'The Spy and the Devil'.
Few historians know that MI6 had a secret agent who spied on Adolf Hitler and his inner circle throughout the 1930s. The fact is covered briefly in Professor Keith Jeffery's iconic History of MI6 published in 2010. It has taken Tim over 30 months to uncover the story of Baron Bill de Ropp from Lithuania whose reporting turned MI6 from being the supplier of low-level tactical information on comminists and saboteurs into the truly geopolitical strategic service it is today. The quest took Tim on a long journey from the Tennessee River to Munich, Berlin and Nuremberg and finally to the shores of the Baltic Sea and the forests of northern Lithuania. What emerges is a tale of courage and tenacity but also of Britain desperately trying to forge a new policy towards Nazi Germany as efforts at appeasement repeatedly failed. There are numerous resonances to the world in 2025.
Book on Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-spy-and-the-devil/tim-willasey-wilsey/9781789468670
Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spy-Devil-untold-penetrated-Hitlers/dp/1789468671
Speaker's bio:
Tim Willasey-Wilsey CMG is Visiting Professor of War Studies at King's College, London and a former British diplomat who served in Africa, Latin American, Asia and Europe. Tim writes for a number of newspapers, academic journals, websites and think tanks. He is a Senior Associate Fellow at Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and regularly appears on Times Radio podcasts.
Gill Bennett was Chief Historian of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from 1995 to 2005 and Senior Editor of the FCO’s official history of British foreign policy, Documents on British Policy Overseas. As an official historian in Whitehall for over forty years, she provided historical advice to twelve Foreign Secretaries under six Prime Ministers, from Edward Heath to Tony Blair. A specialist in the history of secret intelligence, she has worked in the Cabinet Office and was part of the research team working on the official history of the Secret Intelligence Service by the late Professor Keith Jeffery, published in 2010. She is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.