Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from B.E.C. History Magazine, Britain's

best selling history magazine.

I'm Ellie Corporn.

For today's podcast, we've got a lecture on M.I.9 that Helen Fryde delivered as part

of our virtual lecture series.

Helen has written a new book on the history of the Secret Service and here she speaks about

some of their missions to rescue Allied prisoners of war during World War II.

Thank you.

Thanks for the warm welcome.

Well, I hope you'll enjoy some of the anecdotes and part of this history that I'm going to

share with you on M.I.9.

Many of you have probably heard of M.I.9.

Some of you may not and the times when I give talks and I say, M.I.9, and I often joke

and say, yeah, well, it's six upside down.

But of course, being serious about M.I.9, it's role within, it was a branch of military

intelligence that was established in December 1939.

And M.I.9's role, it's brief, was to gain intelligence from prisoners of war.

And very early on in the M.I.9 diary, it says that one of our most important sources of

intelligence could be your prisoners.

Now that can be enemy prisoners of war.

I wrote a book called The Walls Have Years.

And M.I.9, before it became too large and split into M.I.9 and M.I.19, was also involved

...