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Bloomsbury presents Operation Chiffon written and read by Peter Taylor

On the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement Peter Taylor tells for the first time the gripping story of Operation Chiffon the topsecret intelligence operation that helped bring peace to Ireland

A gripping exploration of how MI5 and MI6 worked for a ceasefire with the IRA and how one meeting changed everything Telegraph

An extraordinary story A true tale of espionage The Times

April 1998 the Good Friday Agreement is signed ending decades of violence and bloodshed in Northern Ireland The process of getting the IRA to end its socalled armed struggle was always the prerequisite of the search for peace It was Operation Chiffon that finally helped make it possible

Operation Chiffon takes us inside the topsecret intelligence operation whose roots go back to the bloodiest years of the conflict in the early 1970s involving officers from MI6 and later in the 1990s MI5 The remarkable story which has remained hidden for forty years is now revealed by legendary BBC journalist Peter Taylor with unique access to the officers involved Drawing on exclusive interviews and Taylors fifty years of covering the conflict the book narrates in firsthand detail how those involved risked their careers and their lives to help secure the fragile peace that exists today

Taylor vividly brings this covert operation to life and in the process chronicles the history of Sinn Fin rising from obscurity in the early days of the Troubles to becoming the largest political party in Ireland today It is a story fraught with uncertainty and danger that as Brexit risks destabilising what was achieved in the Good Friday Agreement twentyfive years ago is more important than ever to remember