Secrets & Espionage

Where the state kept its secrets and where the spies were made up: the bugged mansion, the bunkers, the headquarters you can only look at, the memorials to the agents, and the addresses of Bond and Smiley.

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54 Broadway

The Secret Intelligence Service's headquarters for forty years, behind a brass plate for the Minimax Fire Extinguisher Company, and the model for every fictional spymaster's office.

HeadquartersBond & SmileyFree

From 1924 until 1964 'Broadway Buildings' was MI6, with the Chief living at 21 Queen Anne's Gate behind and a private door through to his office on the fourth floor; Philby worked here, Graham Greene and Malcolm Muggeridge passed through, and the wartime Government Code and Cypher School was run from here before Bletchley. The building's cover was so thin that taxi drivers knew it, but the fiction remembers it: this is the office Fleming's M inherited and the one le Carré's Circus is measured against. Nothing marks it, and the building is offices again.

Where
54 Broadway, SW1H 0BL
Nearest station
St. James's Park · 1 min walk

An office building; the front is on Broadway, opposite the station.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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