MI6's Global Fascination: A Look at Britain's Secret Intelligence Service

The Bond effect? How MI6 fascinates spy watchers around the world

Britain’s spooks take quiet satisfaction from survey ranking Secret Intelligence Service Europe’s top espionage agency MI6 has the swagger of James Bond; its French equivalent, DGSE, the complexities of the television drama Le Bureau. The film and TV shows may be fictional, but a survey run by a French magazine that placed the British spy agency above the French as No 1 across all of Europe this week is not. L’Express, a news weekly, conducted a Eurovision-style poll of 60 current and former...

By Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor