Advanced search
Publication Cover
Small Wars & Insurgencies Volume 34, 2023 - Issue 5: Too late the hero? Aggressors, victims, martyrs and anti-heroes in cinematic and fictional representations of insurgents and counter-insurgents, edited by Paul B. Rich
Submit an article Journal homepage
2,167
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Research Articles

Guerrillas in our midst: Reflections on the British experience of counter-insurgency in popular fiction

Geraint HughesDefence Studies Department, King’s College London, teaching at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Faringdon Road, Watchfield, SN6 8LA, UKCorrespondence[email protected]
ORCID Iconhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6795-7478View further author information
ORCID Icon
Pages 896-918 | Received 16 Feb 2022, Accepted 13 Apr 2022, Published online: 27 Apr 2022

Bibliography

  • Primary Sources
  • The Army List (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office).
  • Middle East Centre Archives, St Antony’s College, Oxford.
  • The National Archives, Kew, UK.
  • Parliamentary Debates, Hansard.
  • Books, articles, and official publications.
  • AFM1/10, Counter Insurgency Operations (Strategic and Operational Guidelines) (London: Ministry of Defence 2001).
  • Akam, Simon, The Changing of the Guard: The British Army Since 9/11 (London: Scribe Publications 2021).
  • Aldrich, Richard J., The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray 2001).
  • Ambler, Eric, Passage of Arms (London: The British Library 2016 edition).
  • Anderson, David, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson 2005).
  • Andrew, Christopher, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 ( London: Penguin 2010).
  • Badger, Anthony, ‘Historians, a legacy of suspicion and the ‘migrated archives”, Small Wars and Insurgencies 23/4-5 (2012), pp.799–807.
  • Badsey, Stephen, ‘A Muddy Vision of the Great War’, History Today 65/5 (2015), pp.46–48.
  • Barry, Ben, Blood, Metal and Dust: How Victory Turned into Defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq (Oxford: Osprey Publishing 2020).
  • Beckett, Ian F. W. and John Pimlott (ed.), Armed Forces and Modern Counterinsurgency (NY: St Martin’s Press 1985).
  • Beckett, Ian F.W ., ‘British counter-insurgency: a historiographical reflection’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 23/4-5 (2012), pp.781–798
  • Bennett, Huw, ‘From Direct Rule to Motorman: Adjusting British Military Strategy for Northern Ireland in 1972’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 33/6 (2010), pp.511–532.
  • Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013) .
  • “Detainees Are Always One’s Achilles Heel’: The Struggle over Scrutiny of Detention and Interrogation in Aden, 1963-1967’, War in History 23/4 (2016), pp.457–488.
  • Branch, Daniel, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge University Press 2009).
  • Burke, Edward, An Army of Tribes: British Army Cohesion, Deviancy and Murder in Northern Ireland (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press 2018).
  • ‘50 Years On, It is Time for the British Army to Learn from Bloody Sunday’, RUSI, 28th January 2022; online at https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/50-years-it-time-british-army-learn-bloody-sunday, accessed 13th February 2022.
  • Burleigh, Michael, Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (London: HarperCollins 2009).
  • Charters, David A., The British Army and the Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945-47 (London: Macmillan 1989).
  • Cormac, Rory, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018).
  • Crossman, Richard, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister. I: Minister of Housing, 1964-1966 (London: Jonathan Cape 1975).
  • Daddis, Gregory, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (Cambridge University Press 2020).
  • Dewar, Michael, Brush Fire Wars: Minor Campaigns of the British Army since 1945 (St Martin’s Press 1984).
  • Dillon, Martin, The Dirty War (London: Arrow Books 1990).
  • Duns, Jeremy, Free Agent (London: Pocket Books 2010).
  • Egleton, Clive, Seven Days to a Killing (London: Coronet 1974).
  • Elkins, Caroline, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (Jonathan Cape 2005).
  • Farrell, Theo, Unwinnable: Britain’s War in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 (London: Bodley Head 2017).
  • Faulks, Sebastian, Devil May Care (Penguin 2009).
  • Ferris, John, Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (London: Bloomsbury Press 2020).
  • Fleming, Ian, From Russia With Love (London: Pan Books 1963).
  • Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker (Penguin 2003 edition).
  • Fraser, George MacDonald, The Complete McAuslan (HarperCollins 2000).
  • David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency 1945-1967 (Oxford University Press 2011).
  • Fighting EOKA: The British Counter-Insurgency Campaign on Cyprus, 1955-1959 (Oxford University Press 2015).
  • ‘Toads and Informers: How the British Treated their Collaborators during the Cyprus Emergency, 1955-9’, International History Review 39/1 (2017), pp.71–88.
  • Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire (Macmillan 2011).
  • Gwynn, Charles, Imperial Policing (Macmillan 1934).
  • Hack, Karl, ‘“Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30/1 (1999), pp.99–125.
  • ‘Everyone lived in Fear: Malaya and the British way of counter-insurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 23/4-5 (2012), pp.671–699.
  • “Devils that suck the blood of the Malayan People’: The Case for Post-Revisionist Analysis of Counter-insurgency Violence’, War in History 25/2 (2018), pp.202–226.
  • Hammill, Desmond, Pig in the Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969-1985 (London: Methuen 1986).
  • Hennessey, Thomas, The Evolution of the Troubles 1970-72 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press 2007).
  • Hoffman, Bruce, Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel (NY: Knopf Publishing 2015).
  • Holmes, Richard, Firing Line (Jonathan Cape 1985).
  • Hughes, Geraint ‘The Use of Undercover Military Units in Counter-terrorism Operations: A historical analysis with reference to contemporary anti-terrorism’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 21/4 (2010), 561–590.
  • Hughes, Matthew, ‘The Banality of Brutality: British Armed Forces and the Repression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-39’, English Historical Review 124/507 (2009), pp.313–354.
  • ‘Terror in Galilee: British-Jewish Collaboration and the Special Night Squads in Palestine during the Arab Revolt, 1938-39’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43/4 (2015), pp.590–610.
  • Hyam, Ronald, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-1968 (Cambridge University Press 2006).
  • Jackson, Ashley, ‘British Counter-Insurgency in History: A Useful Precedent?’, British Army Review 139 (2006), pp.12–22.
  • Jeffery, Keith, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949 (Bloomsbury 2011).
  • Jones, Sadie, Small Wars (London: Chatto and Windus 2009).
  • Judd, Alan, A Breed of Heroes (HarperCollins 1993), p.183.
  • Kalyvas, Stathis, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press 2006).
  • Kitson, Frank, Low Intensity Operations (London: Faber 1971).
  • Larteguy, Jean (translated by Xan Fielding), The Centurions (Penguin 2015 edition).
  • Law, Randall D. (ed.), The Routledge History of Terrorism (Abingdon, UK: Routledge 2015).
  • Le Carre, John, The Little Drummer Girl (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1983).
  • Lindstrum, Erik, ‘Facts about Atrocity: Reporting Colonial Violence in Postwar Britain’, History Workshop Journal 84 (2017), pp.108–127.
  • Magee, Patrick, Gangsters or Guerrillas? Representations of Irish Republicans in ‘Troubles Fiction’ (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publishers 2001).
  • Marlantes, Karl, Matterhorn (London: Atlantic Books 2011).
  • Maugham, W. Somerset, Ashenden: The British Agent (London: Mandarin Press edition 1991).
  • Mawby, Spencer, British Policy in Aden and the Protectorates 1955 to 1967. Last Outpost of a Middle East Empire (Routledge 2005).
  • McCallum, Dawood Ali, The Final Charge (Inverness, UK: Sandstone Press 2014).
  • Mockaitis, Thomas, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-60 (Macmillan 1990).
  • British Counter-insurgency in the post-Imperial Era (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press 1995).
  • Mumford, Andrew, The Counter-Insurgency Myth: The British experience of irregular warfare (Routledge 2012).
  • Nagl, John, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (NY: Praeger 2002).
  • Newsinger, John, Dangerous Men: The SAS and Popular Culture (London: Pluto Press 1997).
  • British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland (Macmillan 2002).
  • Parr, Helen, Our Boys: The Story of a Paratrooper (Penguin 2019).
  • Paget, Julian, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning (Faber 1967).
  • Peterson, John, Oman’s Insurgencies. The Sultanate’s Struggle for Supremacy (London: Saqi Books 2007).
  • Reis, Bruno C., ‘The Myth of British Minimum Force in Counterinsurgency Campaigns during Decolonisation (1945–1970)’, Journal of Strategic Studies 34/2 (2011), pp.245–279.
  • Seymour, Gerald, Harry’s Game (London: Corgi Press 1999 edition).
  • The Glory Boys (London: Fontana 1977).
  • Stubbs, Jonathan, “Always ready to explode into violence!’ Representing the Cyprus Emergency and decolonization in The High Bright Sun (1965)’, Journal of European Popular Culture 6/2 (2015), pp.103–116.
  • Takriti, Abdel Razzaq, Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965-1976 (Oxford University Press 2016).
  • Taylor, Peter, The Provos (Bloomsbury 1998).
  • Loyalists (Bloomsbury 2000).
  • Brits (Bloomsbury 2002).
  • Thomas, Leslie, The Virgin Soldiers (London: Pan Macmillan Books 1967).
  • Thomas, Martin, Fight or Flight: Britain, France and their Roads from Empire (Oxford University Press 2014).
  • Thompson, Robert, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam (London: Chatto and Windus 1972).
  • Thornton, Rod, ‘The British Army and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 15/1 (2004), pp.83–106.
  • Tripodi, Christian, The Unknown Enemy: Counterinsurgency and the Illusion of Control (Cambridge University Press 2021).
  • Urban, Mark, Big Boys’ Rules: The Secret Struggle against the IRA (Faber 1992).
  • Uriate, Maximilian, The White Donkey: Terminal Lance (Boston MA: Little, Brown and Co 2016).
  • Valeri, Marc, Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State (London: C. Hurst 2017).
  • Voltaire (translated by John Butt), Candide (Penguin 1947 edition).
  • Walker, Jonathan, Aden Insurgency: The Savage War in South Arabia 1962-67 (Staplehurst, UK: Spellmount 2005).
  • Waugh, Evelyn, The Sword of Honour Trilogy (Penguin 2001 edition).
  • Films, TV dramas and documentaries.
  • Incident at Echo Six (1958).
  • The League of Gentlemen (1960).
  • The Battle of Algiers (1965).
  • ‘The Bigger They Are’, The Sweeney (1978).
  • Harry’s Game (1982).
  • Hidden Agenda (1990).
  • A Breed of Heroes (1994).
  • Bloody Sunday (2002).
  • ‘“Mad Mitch” and his Tribal Law’, Empire Warriors (2004).
  • ’71 (2014).

Related research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.