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World

The secret spy films made by MI6

27 September 2021

8:20 AM

27 September 2021

8:20 AM

Those attending the premiere of No Time to Die this week would perhaps be surprised to learn that the Bond films were once considered to be a national security threat. In the 1960s, with the image of Cold War espionage increasingly becoming shaped by films like Dr No, and TV series like Danger Man and The Avengers, MI6 feared that campy pulp fiction would drown out the real threat of Communist subversion.

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Persona Non Grata and other films are being digitised by the BFI, the National Archives and the Imperial War Museum to mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the Central Office of Information (COI).


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