IN THE EARLY 1990s, with the cold war over and the Russian threat seemingly gone, Sir Robert Fellowes, the private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, was lunching with Sir Gerry Warner, the deputy chief of MI6. “What shall I tell Her Majesty her Secret Intelligence Service [SIS] is for?” he asked. “Please tell her”, replied Sir Gerry, “it is the last penumbra of her Empire.” Later that decade another MI6 officer described Britain’s aspiration to global intelligence as “the itch after the amputation”.
