Stories straight out of a James Bond film

It was a scene straight out of a James Bond movie.

In the early hours of the morning of November 23, 1940 a small boat approaches the coast of Nazi-occupied Netherlands at Scheveningen, close to a seafront casino.

A black-clad figure clambers out and surreptitiously makes his way ashore.

Once safely on the beach, he sheds his special rubber oversuit designed to keep him dry and emerges onto the promenade in full evening dress.

The man was Pieter Tazelaar, a MI6 agent sent to spy on the Germans occupying his homeland.

His first task was swiftly to establish his cover, mingling with the crowds thronging around the casino.

Before he landed, a colleague had even sprinkled him with a few drops of Hennessy XO brandy to reinforce his “party goer’s image”.

His tale of derring-do is one of many to be revealed in the first authorised history of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

Tazelaar certainly needed every bit of help that he could get. The book discloses that of the 15 agents sent by MI6 to the Netherlands in the 18 months from June 1940, all but four were captured and killed by the Germans.

Another agent featured in the book conformed to a rather different espionage stereotype – the Mata Hari spy who uses her charms to extract secrets from unsuspecting males.

Identified only by her codename, Ecclesiastic, the glamorous 22-year-old from central Europe was, in 1944, living in Lisbon in neutral Portugal where she had become the mistress of an officer in the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service.

She was said to have agreed to work for the allies out of a mixture of “financial reasons” and “a certain amount of patriotism”.

Rather than obtaining enemy secrets, however, she was set to work by MI6 passing misinformation to the Germans.

It was arranged for her to get a job as a secretary in an office staffed by RAF personnel where she claimed to have access to “technical air secrets” – including the details of a new warplane - which she fed back to her unsuspecting lover.

One of her case officers, Jona ‘Klop’ Ustinov (father of the actor Peter Ustinov), said that she clearly enjoyed “the game of mobilising her ample female resources against the normal male instincts”.

Another renowned agent from World War II was Wilfred “Biffy” Dunderdale, who ran MI6’s French networks.

Before the war in Paris he was know for his “penchant for pretty women and fast cars” and may have been one of the original models for James Bond.

He knew Ian Fleming, who worked in naval intelligence, and after the war he was fond of claiming that elements of his own story appeared in the Bond books.

Fleming is not the only literary connection to feature in the MI6 story, with authors Arthur Ransome, Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, all passing through the ranks of the service.

The distinctly unmilitary Greene, who was supposed to be operating under the cover of an Army officer, had to be sent on a special course to provide him with “the most elementary instruction in soldiering so that he could wear battle dress without embarrassment”.