ARTICLE: How to be a WW2 Spy

I spent yesterday at the National Archives at Kew, obsessing over the Maquis and one of Churchill’s not-so-finest hours, which coincides nicely with what I want to give you today. Periodically, TNA dumps new piles of documents into the public domain, and in the latest group there is a stack of MI5 files. By far my favourite, I’m about to share with you today. Lots of you have been hooked on Slow Horses, admit it, and lots of you will be wondering if you would be a super-spy or end up in the service of Gary Oldman. I’m going to help you along a bit. Herewith, a MI5 handbook, given to all employees in WW2 with comprehensive basics in how to tail a subject…

First, an introduction:

The notes on observation which follow have been compiled for the use of officers who may have had no practical experience in observation work. The notes are not intended to be taken as an exhaustive treatise on watching, but as an introduction to the subject and as indicating some of the more important elementary principles to be observed. Success in observation can be achieved only through long and arduous experience, but the principles here indicated will put the beginner on the right lines and may help him to avoid some of the more obvious difficulties which may otherwise bring him to grief.

Observation is a very onerous and exacting profession. Screen sleuths of the Secret Service thriller or detective novel appeal to the uninitiated, but in actual practice there is little glamour and much monotony in such a calling as "observation." A successful watcher is a rarity, and though ‘many are called, few are chosen,' and even then not more than a very small proportion of those engaged in such work can be considered first class. After many years' experience of watching and following, the writer is forced to the conclusion that the ideal watcher is born and not made, and unless he has a natural flair for the work he will never rise above a mediocre standard. At various times hundreds of men have been interviewed as prospective trainees but very few have been accepted, for the reason that when tried out they are found to lack the one essential qualification, viz., patience, and to have engaged them would have been unfair to tried men who would be called upon to carry passengers every time a tricky spot of watching became necessary.

So what made a good watcher?