Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge

Professor Christopher Andrew is an Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge with an interest in international relations since the French Revolution. He is the Former Chairman of the Faculty of History, and in December 2010 he stepped down as President of Corpus Christi College.His research interests are Twentieth-century political history and international relations with particular reference to the role and influence of intelligence agencies.

Andrew is the Official Historian of the Security Service (MI5), Honorary Air Commodore of 7006 (VR) Intelligence Squadron in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, Chairman of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, and former Visiting Professor at Harvard, Toronto and Canberra. Andrew served as co-editor of Intelligence and National Security, and a presenter of BBC radio and TV documentaries, including the Radio Four series What If?.

His many books include a number of studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history. He rose to prominence with his books on the KGB, most notably KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (1990) and The Mitrokhin Archive. Vol.1: The KGB in Europe and the West (1999), written in collaboration with former KGB officers Oleg Gordievsky and Vasili Mitrokhin respectively.

Owning to his expertise in the history of security and intelligence agencies, Professor Andrew was commissioned by the Security Service (MI5) to write the first authorised history of the Service, to mark its centenary in 2009. To conduct his research for the book, Professor Andrew was given exclusive access to the Service's records and files. Defence of the Realm (2009) was very well received.