Taline Ter Minassian's Most Secret Agent of Empire is the first full-length biography of English Army officer Reginald Teague-Jones, whose exciting career was exposed to public attention after his death in a nursing home in Plymouth, England, in 1988 at the age of 99. At that time, Peter Hopkirk, journalist and author of several books on the Great Game—the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Asia—published Teague-Jones's diaries with a foreword. In fact, the diaries' author had long since abandoned his given name and had, of necessity, spent more than sixty-five years using an alias, Ronald Sinclair.

In many ways, Teague-Jones's career was reminiscent of a character drawn from a John Buchan thriller. He was an accomplished linguist who, as a boy, witnessed firsthand the 1905 revolution in St. Petersburg. Interestingly, that experience of Russia apparently did not lead him to question the negative interpretation of Russia's intentions that underpinned the Great Game. Before the First World War, he worked as a policeman in the North-West Frontier Province, and then, as an army officer during the war, he tried to apprehend the German spy William Wassmuss in Persia. Subsequently, he participated in the Malleson Mission, named after its leader, Sir Wilfrid Malleson, to Meshed in eastern Persia. He then passed into Transcaspia, to the north of Meshed, in disguise. His task was to disrupt the Transcaspian Railway, which was being used to transport cotton supplies to the West for use by Germany and its allies. More generally, the British and British Indian authorities wanted to ascertain the extent to which it might be possible to disrupt the passage of enemy forces across the Black Sea and towards the Indian frontier. An important related issue was the intention of Bolshevik forces. Teague-Jones was appointed Britain's political representative to the nascent Transcaspian authority and established a wide-ranging intelligence network centered on that region. Accused of having overseen the execution of twenty-six Bolshevik commissars in September 1918, several years later, after a spell as a political and liaison officer based at Constantinople but ranging across the Caucasus region and beyond, he changed his name and largely disappeared from the official British record. His life was deemed to be at risk from a vengeful Soviet government. He nonetheless traveled widely, made films, and wrote about his experiences. During the Second World War, Teague-Jones worked for the British Security Coordination, which had overarching responsibility for British intelligence operations in North America and beyond. Ter Minassian alleges that, as Ronald Sinclair, he spent much of his career working for the Indian Political Intelligence Service. In later life, Teague-Jones maintained a keen interest in matters pertaining to Central Asia and the Middle East and also preserved links with former colleagues in the intelligence services.

By virtue of determined research, Ter Minassian has added useful detail to the findings of Peter Hopkirk, as well as to my own work, Gentleman Spies: Intelligence Agents in the British Empire and Beyond (2002). In particular, she provides very interesting information about the Punjab Police Academy and Teague-Jones's training there. She points, more confidently than previous authors, to a subsequent and long-term attachment to the Indian Political Intelligence Service. There is also much detail on the complicated political constellation in Transcaspia at the end of the First World War. The context surrounding the execution of the Bolshevik commissars is also detailed. She endorses Brian Pearce's conclusion that Teague-Jones's direct involvement, captured in film and on the canvas for “Soviet martyrology,” (134) was fabricated. Further information is also given about his employment with the British Security Coordination.

On the whole, Ter Minassian's industry has certainly been worthwhile, but some reservations are necessary. The book sits rather uneasily between a popular work and a work of scholarship. If regarded as a scholarly work, the earlier chapters especially are occasionally speculative and well padded, with certain distracting mannerisms of style. In spite of the acknowledged paucity of documentary sources concerning Teague-Jones's wartime service in pursuit of William Wassmuss, the chapter on that subject extends to over twenty pages. There is also a lack of precision on some points, notably Teague-Jones's linguistic proficiency (18, 27). There is a reference to the intended “re-conquest” of southern Persia by British forces during the First World War (55). Britain had not previously conquered it. There is also a lack of effective contextualization of some issues and odd omissions in terms of secondary reading. Reference to Jennifer Sigel's Endgame (2002), among other sources, would have helped to set the scene of Anglo-Russian relations in Persia and Central Asia before 1914. Also, with reference to the Indian Political Intelligence Service, she would have benefited from reading Richard Popplewell's book, Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the Defence of the Indian Empire, 1904–1924 (1995). More bewildering, in connection with Teague-Jones's period in Transcaspia, is the lack of systematic use of the Political and Secret Department's files of the India Office, where some of Sinclair's own papers are held, and, more importantly, those of the successive committees under Lord Curzon, which oversaw British involvement in Transcaspia and discussed it in detail. The lack of systematic research has led to another surprising omission: Teague-Jones's apparent employment by the Secret Intelligence Service immediately after the First World War. No connection is made between his employment as a refugee officer among Russians displaced by civil war and the need of the British authorities for intelligence about developments in Russia. While useful detail is provided on the careers of some individuals who crop up in connection with Teague-Jones, such as Vivian Gabriel, others, such as Sir Arthur Hirtzel (31, 56), are referred to in the text without any explanation as to their position and then, in Hirtzel's case, wrongly identified as a Foreign Office official (168). Also, there are occasional instances of repetition.

However, such reservations aside, Ter Minassian's book adds much interesting detail to our understanding of Reginald Teague-Jones.