For half a century, television spies have been trained professionals, reluctant heroes, housewives, businessmen, criminals, and comedians. They have by turns been glamorous, campy, reflective, sexy, and aloof. This is the first book-length treatment of one of TV's oldest and most fascinating genres. Britton's comprehensive guide provides readers, from casual viewers to die-hard fans, with behind-the-scenes stories to this notable segment of television entertainment.

From the early 1960s, in which television spies were used essentially as anti-Communist propaganda, through the subsequent...

At a time when the methods and purposes of intelligence agencies are under a great deal of scrutiny, author Wesley Britton offers an unprecedented look at their fictional counterparts. In Beyond Bond: Spies in Film and Fiction, Britton traces the history of espionage in literature, film, and other media, demonstrating how the spy stories of the 1840s began cementing our popular conceptions of what spies do and how they do it. Considering sources from Graham Greene to Ian Fleming, Alfred Hitchcock to Tom Clancy, Beyond Bond looks at the tales that have intrigued readers and...

Wes Britton's "Spy Television" (2004) was an overview of espionage on the small screen from 1951 to 2002. His "Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film" (2004) wove spy literature, movies, radio, comics, and other popular media together with what the public knew about actual espionage to show the interrelationships between genres and approaches in the past century. "Onscreen and Undercover," the last book in Britton's Spy Trilogy, provides a history of spies on the large screen, with an emphasis on the stories these films present.

Since the days of the silent documentary short, spying has...