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From Wondery, I'm Charlie Higson, spy novelist, actor, comedian, and this is The Spy Who.

Thank you for joining us for our final episode of The Spy Who Dressed the Queen.

The phrase, on Her Majesty's Secret Service, may carry a little more weight than we realize.

Often the role of the British royal family is considered ceremonial and their

homes and grounds, something of a tourist attraction. But what if there was something more shadowy

afoot? Building on our series about Hardy Amies, the Queen's dressmaker and orchestrator of

Nazi assassinations in occupied Belgium, I wanted to explore the two worlds

of the British monarchy and their secret services. If you haven't already, be sure to listen

to episodes one to three of the spy who dressed the queen to discover how Hardy mastered both

vanity and violence. In this episode, I'm going to speak to Richard J. Aldrich,

Professor of Politics and International Studies at Warwick University, and Rory McCormack,

Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham. Both are fellows of the

Royal Historical Society. Both have a list of accreditations and achievements

to their name that's longer than my arm, and together they've written the book, The Secret Royals,

Spying and the Crown, from Victoria to Diana. It's a quite eye-opening account of how the

intelligence world intermingles with the British royal family to this very day.

We do think of the spy world as being dominated by men, but in this domain, it's the women who have the power.

And it goes all the way back to Elizabeth I.

This episode is brought to you by Netflix,

and their powerful new documentary,

Britain and the Blitz, available now.

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