In this post, I am going to be analysing Richard J. Aldrich’s Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence Since 1945 article from the English Historical Review. I found this article very interesting as it examines intelligence history while also asking bigger questions about who gets to write history, how secrecy shapes archives, and why “official” narratives can be as much about power as about truth. I will be exploring Aldrich’s central arguments and then connecting them to my own research interests in gender and intelligence and the wider debate of silences in sources.
Aldrich exposes the extraordinary lengths to which the British state has gone to manage the history of its intelligence services since 1945. His central claim is that “official history” is never just about disclosure but about control through staged releases, negotiated compromises, and carefully constructed narratives. The metaphor of an “empire of secrecy” captures this perfectly as it suggests that post-war secrecy was directed by the same hierarchical and manipulative strategies that had characterised Britain’s colonial rule. Colonial governors during Partition, for instance, controlled the release of reports and attempted ot conceal atrocities to minimise British culpability. Whitehall also did in their own way, relying on “insider” historians who were granted privileged access in return for restraint in what they decided to publish. These figures did not uncover an unvarnished truth but produced a carefully compromised fiction that allowed the state to present gestures of openness without surrendering all control.
Aldrich also highlights how Britain’s preferred method of “policing the past” was not blunt censorship but strategic disclosure, in the guise of transparency. The release of documents was highly selective, and even the policies governing what could be released were themselves classified, creating a secret system to manage this secrecy. This system allowed the state to present intelligence history as more open than it really was. What undermined this control were memoirs by former insiders such as Duff Cooper and Kim Philby, which often slipped through the cracks. These unauthorised accounts reveal both the fragility of the state’s narrative monopoly and the way in which intelligence history is always contested between insiders and outsiders.
The role of official histories is especially central to Aldrich’s analysis. Works such as M.R.D. Foot’s SOE in France or the Hinsley volumes on wartime intelligence were not neutral chronicles but tools for narrative management. They provided just enough disclosure to appear authoritative while reinforcing state priorities. Foot’s volume on SOE, for instance, was shaped by Cold War imperatives to counter communist claims about resistance movements. This shows how historical narratives and selective declassification were a way of shaping public memory during ideological battles. This project also links to broader ideas on how historical narratives are also heavily shaped by the political and ideological needs of the time they are written. Thus, in this light, secrecy was not simply about protecting past agents but about credibility and Britain’s international image.
This argument raises questions about the nature of archives themselves. If official intelligence histories are curated, then so too are the underlying records. Aldrich makes it clear that intelligence archives are selective, censored, and structured by omission. This point resonates with my own research into female SOE agents and Bletchley codebreakers. Their stories are mediated by what files the state has chosen to publish and what remains concealed. This idea that truth in intelligence history is never neutral, as narratives are shaped by decisions about what to omit, what to emphasise, and when to disclose. In this sense, intelligence history is always political as omission is strategic.
One of Aldrich’s most useful arguments is his contrast between “what” history and “how” history. Official publications often provide the “what”, chronologies, facts and operational details. However, they rarely emphasise the “how” which includes the methods of intelligence, the debates inside agencies, or the silences in the sources themselves. This is especially significant for women’s intelligence history. Much of the published material, especially in public media, celebrates what female agents did but rarely explores how we know these stories, who authorised their telling and what this tells us about the historical climate of the time. Shifting the focus to the “how” has shaped the way I research, as I have begun to see intelligence history as not just about operations but about the politics of knowledge itself.
The wider implication of Aldrich’s article is that intelligence agencies are not only historical actors but also hugely important to historical memory. Their control over disclosure allows them to shape how the past is remembered. The “empire of secrecy” metaphor emphasises that this is not merely about operational security but about their power to construct official narratives. As I stated before, I see strong parallels here with Partition and British officials deliberately suppressing evidence of atrocities. In both cases, oral testimony and unofficial accounts provide counter-narratives that disrupt and challenge the state’s attempt to construct the past, making research into these marginalised perspectives extremely important (and extremely interesting, in my opinion).
Overall, what makes Aldrich’s article so powerful and fascinating to me is how it reframes intelligence history and highlights its wider importance. It is not just the story of spies and their operations but a study of how secrecy and disclosure shape historical narratives. The writing of intelligence history is shaped as much by the present’s needs and available sources as by the past’s realities. For me, studying intelligence history means examining not only what happened, but also how and why those events are remembered, or forgotten, in particular ways.
telling tales 