Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies. It was given new impetus by the development of fascism and communism in the lead-up to World War II, continued to develop during the Cold War, and received a fresh impetus from the emergence of rogue states, international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, maritime piracy and technological sabotage and espionage as potent threats to Western societies. As a genre, spy fiction is thematically related to the novel of adventure, the thriller and the politico-military thriller.
William Tufnell Le Queux was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat, a traveller, a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available; his claims regarding his own abilities and exploits, however, were usually exaggerated. His best-known works are the anti-French and anti-Russian invasion fantasy The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and the anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910 (1906), the latter becoming a bestseller.
The European theater of World War II was one of the two main theaters of combat during World War II. It saw heavy fighting across Europe for almost six years, starting with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and ending with the Western Allies conquering most of Western Europe, the Soviet Union conquering most of Eastern Europe including the German capital Berlin and Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945 although fighting continued elsewhere in Europe until 25 May. On 5 June 1945, the Berlin Declaration proclaiming the unconditional surrender of Germany to the four victorious powers was signed. The Allied powers fought the Axis powers on two major fronts but there were other fronts varying in scale from the Italian campaign the 3rd largest campaign in Europe to the Polish Campaign as well as in a strategic bombing offensive and in the adjoining Mediterranean and Middle East theater.
Harrie Irving Hancock was an American chemist and writer, mainly remembered as an author of children's literature and juveniles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and as having written a fictional depiction of a German invasion of the United States.
Brigadier-General Sir James Edward Edmonds was an officer of the Royal Engineers in the late-Victorian era British Army who worked in the Intelligence Division, took part in the creation of the forerunner of MI5 and promoted several spy scares, which failed to impress Richard Haldane, the Secretary of State for War (1905–1912). Viscount Esher said that Edmonds was
...a silly witness from the War Office [who saw] rats everywhere - behind every arras.
The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television.
Invasion literature is a literary genre that was popular in the period between 1871 and the First World War (1914–1918). The invasion novel first was recognized as a literary genre in the UK, with the novella The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer (1871), an account of a German invasion of England, which, in the Western world, aroused the national imaginations and anxieties about hypothetical invasions by foreign powers; by 1914 the genre of invasion literature comprised more than 400 novels and stories.
The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer is an 1871 novella by George Tomkyns Chesney, starting the genre of invasion literature and an important precursor of science fiction. Written just after the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War, it describes an invasion of Britain by a German-speaking country referred to in oblique terms as The Other Power or The Enemy.
Before Armageddon: An Anthology of Victorian and Edwardian Imaginative Fiction Published Before 1914 is a collection of stories, including invasion literature, and one article, all edited by Michael Moorcock. Originally published in hardback by W.H. Allen in 1975, it was re-issued as a paperback by Star in 1976.
The Swoop!, or How Clarence Saved England is a short comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom by Alston Rivers Ltd, London, on 16 April 1909. Its subtitle is A Tale of the Great Invasion.
The Rape of Belgium was a series of systematic war crimes, especially mass murder and deportation, by German troops against Belgian civilians during the invasion and occupation of Belgium in World War I.
When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns is a novel written by the British author Saki and published in November 1913. It is set several years in what was then the future, after a war between Germany and Great Britain in which the former won.
The British Empire has often been portrayed in fiction. Originally such works described the Empire because it was a contemporary part of life; nowadays fictional references are also frequently made in a steampunk context.
The Back Door was an anonymous work of invasion literature serialised in Hong Kong newspaper The China Mail from 30 September through 8 October 1897. The work, written in the form of a historical account, describes an imagined Russian and French landing at Hong Kong's Deep Water Bay, followed by shelling of Victoria Peak, a sea battle in the Sulphur Channel between Hong Kong Island and Green Island, and a last stand at Stonecutters Island in which British forces were decisively defeated. The story was intended as a criticism of the lack of British funding for the defence of Hong Kong; fears of invasion were driven by French expansionism in Southeast Asia and increasing Russian influence in Manchuria. It was speculated, but never proven, that members of the Imperial Japanese Army read the book in preparation for the 1941 Battle of Hong Kong, in which Japanese forces overran Hong Kong in just 18 days. In terms of its style, it follows the model laid out by George Tomkyns Chesney's The Battle of Dorking, but is noteworthy for its attention to detail, even giving real names of individual soldiers and ships; one reviewer described it as "unique" in its verisimilitude, stating that only William Le Queux's The Invasion of 1910 and Cleveland Moffett's The Conquest of America could compare to it.
Russia–United Kingdom relations, also Anglo-Russian relations, are the bilateral relations between Russia and the United Kingdom. Formal ties between the courts started in 1553. Russia and Britain became allies against Napoleon in the early-19th century. They were enemies in the Crimean War of the 1850s, and rivals in the Great Game for control of central Asia in the latter half of the 19th century. They allied again in World Wars I and II, although the Russian Revolution of 1917 strained relations. The two countries were at sword's point during the Cold War (1947–1989). Russia's big business tycoons developed strong ties with London financial institutions in the 1990s after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
The Invasion of 1910 is a 1906 novel written mainly by William Le Queux. It is one of the most famous examples of invasion literature. It is viewed by some as an example of pre-World War I Germanophobia. It can also be viewed as prescient, as it preached the need to prepare for war with Germany.
France–Russia relations, also known as Franco-Russian relations or Russo-French relations, have seldom been friendly.
The term Invasion of England may refer to the following planned or actual invasions of what is now modern England, successful or otherwise.
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians and is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.
