The Secret Generations

May, 1910

The world is on the eve of a war set to ruin the lives of a whole generation.

The Railton family are intimately involved in the world of espionage, which will become so crucial to the conflict’s outcome.

With the death of General Sir William Railton, the family patriarch and hero of Balaclava, the family is thrown into a world of violence and intrigue.

Manipulated by the new head of the family, the ruthless arch-intriguer Giles Railton, each member of the dynasty comes to play their part in the ‘Great Game’ of Intelligence.

Through the story of one family, whose lives become caught up in some of the greatest struggles of the twentieth century, John Gardner traces the birth, the successes and the failures of the organizations now known as MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

From the battlefields of the Western Front to Russia on the eve of revolution, this epic work of fiction tells the story of the dramatic history of Britain’s intelligence and security services.

Before coming an author of fiction in the early 1960’s John Gardner was variously a stage magician, a Royal Marine officer and a journalist.

In all Gardner has fifty-four novels to his credit, including Maestro, which was the New York Times book of the year.

He was also invited by Ian Fleming’s literary copyright holders to write a series of continuation James Bond novels, which proved to be so successful that instead of the contracted three books he went on to publish some fourteen titles, including Licence Renewed and Icebreaker.

Having lived in the Republic of Ireland, the United States and the UK, John Gardner sadly died in August of 2007 having just completed his third novel in the Moriarty trilogy, Conan Doyle’s eponymous villain of the Sherlock Holmes series.