Couriers, Saboteurs & Spies

Event information

Intelligence gathering was essential to both sides in the First and Second World Wars. At the heart of MI6's efforts were two key networks in Belgium. Agents in the White Lady acted as couriers, saboteurs, and spies to facilitate the end of German control. And, when war broke out again two decades later, the leaders of the network regrouped and established a successor: the Clarence Service.

Helen Fry charts the history of these pivotal intelligence networks for the first time. Drawing on recently declassified information, Fry examines who the agents were, how they were recruited, and how the intelligence they gathered directly impacted the outcome of both wars. Operators in the field sent over eight hundred radio messages to London and delivered more than a thousand reports, including groundbreaking information on Hitler's secret weapon the V-1. This is a compelling account of the agents who risked their lives and found ingenious ways to smuggle intelligence out of occupied Belgium.


“It is not often that a writer is able to add to history rather than interpret it, but in her exploration of Belgian and Luxembourg archives Fry has done just that.” (Alan Judd, “The Spectator”)


Historian and biographer Helen Fry is the author of “The Walls Have Ears”, “Spymaster”, “MI9”, and more than twenty books on intelligence, prisoners of war, and the social history of the Second World War She appears regularly in media interviews and podcasts and has been involved in numerous documentaries.

Ross MacFarlane is an archivist who has over twenty years’ experience working on the history of science and medicine. He has researched, lectured, and written on a range of topics, such as aspects of the occult, the history of early recorded sound, and the collection of amulets and charms in Edwardian London.