Intrigue, deceit, corruption, villainy, eccentricity, and violence - the many aspects of the fascinating story of Britain's secret state. The secret state exists to protect Britain from the enemies within. In the past it was supposed to have saved her from the terrors of the French and Russian revolutions. More recently it may have saved her from Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. Is this so? Do the spies, informers, political policemen, letter-openers and buggists deserve a place in Britain's history? Plots and Paranoia presents the history of Britain's covert counter-subversive agencies from earliest times to Spycatcher. It disentangles the secret state from the web of myth which has surrounded it in the past. A lively and thought-provoking book, it ends by revealing a new, possible but unsuspected Soviet mole, in a most unlikely place.