Red List

A gripping history of the Security Service and its covert surveillance on British writers and intellectuals in the twentieth century.

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Based upon official documents released to the National Archives, distinguished historian David Caute, discovers that the British state had a surprising interest in a number of writers, artists, scientists and historians who posed no threat to national security at all. Those at the heart of British media, culture, and academia, it seems, were perpetually under suspicion as potential subversives. Caute here exposes the massive state operation that went to extraordinary lengths to surveil their every move. Guilt by association was paramount. Letters were opened, phones were intercepted, private homes were bugged and citizens were placed under physical surveillance by Special Branch agents.

Among the targets of surveillance are found such prominent figures as Arthur Ransome, Paul Robeson, J.B. Priestley, Kingsley Amis, George Orwell, Doris Lessing, Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender, Dorothy Hodgkin, Jacob Bronowski, John Berger, Benjamin Britten, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Kingsley Martin, Michael Redgrave, Joan Littlewood, Joseph Losey, Michael Foot and Harriet Harman. More than 200 victims are listed here but further MI5 files will be released to the National Archives.