Profiles in intelligence: An interview with Michael Herman

Michael Herman is a pioneer of the academic study of intelligence. His career spans the worlds of intelligence and academia in the United Kingdom, and has done much to bring the two closer together. Born in 1929, Michael was educated at Scarborough High School before securing a scholarship to read Modern History at Queen’s College Oxford, in 1946. His studies there were interrupted by two years’ National Service between 1947 and 1949, when Michael served in the Intelligence Corps in Egypt. He then returned to Oxford to complete his studies and was awarded a First Class degree. In 1952 he joined the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) based in Cheltenham, where he was to remain in a succession of roles until 1987, a period that also included secondments to the Cabinet Office, as Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and to the Defence Intelligence Staff. [Taken from introduction]