Event Start Date: 10 April 2024

 The Somerville London Group invite you to join them for a private guided tour of Spies, Lies and Deception at The Imperial War Museum in London. 

We are now at capacity for the tour, but hope you can join us for another event at a later date.

The Tour starts at 7pm (meet at 6.45pm) until around 8.15pm and will be followed by a drinks reception after the tour.  

This highly acclaimed exhibition examines the role of real-life spies and military deception from the First World War to the present day, bringing to light a wealth of true stories through around 150 fascinating, often improbable, exhibits. 

From a fountain pen capable of firing a jet of tear gas and lipstick containing a hidden subminiature camera, to a 1980s boombox embedded with KGB surveillance equipment, the exhibition is packed with ingenious objects. 

Gill Bennett (1969, History) will guide us around this must-see exhibition about deception and espionage from the First World War to the present day.

Gill is a Senior Associate Fellow of RUSI. She was Chief Historian of the Foreign Office from 1995-2005, and Senior Editor of its official history of British foreign policy, Documents on British Policy Overseas. She has worked as a historian in Whitehall for over forty years and provided historical advice to twelve Foreign Secretaries under six Prime Ministers, from Edward Heath to Tony Blair.

A specialist in the history of secret intelligence, she published a ground-breaking biography, Churchill’s Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence, in 2006. She was also part of the research team working on the official history of the Secret Intelligence Service by the late Professor Keith Jeffery, published in 2010.

 

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