Professor Adrian O’Sullivan (Aidrean Ó Súilleabháin)

As an intelligence historian and author, Adrian O’Sullivan’s interests go far beyond merely documenting the monolithic structures, strategies, policies, and procedures of clandestine organisations. Instead it is the people within them — their ideas and their behaviours, their triumphs and their failures — who inspire Adrian to research and write about the secret world. In his work he always strives to give official history a human face, which is the very opposite of the official historian’s intent.

Added to this are his special interests: the Third Reich, the Second World War, the ‘true’ Middle East (east of Suez and the Levant, that is), and the interplay of diverse occidental and oriental cultures within a complex context of global conflict. Such dynamic dimensions inevitably lead Adrian far from the confines of the intelligence services per se, into a twilit operational world of espionage, counterintelligence, subversion, sabotage, and black propaganda.

Adrian O’Sullivan originally trained as a Germanist at University College London and the University of Alberta, and as a professional translator/interpreter (Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists). He then acquired a lifetime of experience as an intelligence linguist and communications specialist, which included first-hand knowledge of the Middle East, and which culminated in his doctoral work on Persia (Iran) at the University of South Africa.

Now Adrian’s strategic goal is to fill some significant lacunae in the narrative of Allied-Axis clandestine warfare in the Middle East and Central Asia. He is currently researching and writing monographs on covert operations in Turkey and the Levant during the Second World War, which should, together with his other books, ultimately constitute a comprehensive history of Middle East intelligence and security operations.

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland

Member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians

Member of the North American Society for Intelligence History

Friend of Canterbury Cathedral

Before joining BGU in August 2021, Adrian O’Sullivan had been participating in a productive research and writing partnership with Claire Hubbard-Hall, Senior Lecturer in History. Together they had been engaged for several years in dynamic joint investigations into a wide range of covert organisations, operations, and activities in the global context of the wartime secret services, both Allied and Axis, often using techniques derived from such ancillary disciplines as social history and geospatial studies. Now working together in the same department at BGU, the future looks bright, with at least two full-length monographs currently in production and several other cooperative ventures at the research stage.

The Baghdad Set: Iraq through the Eyes of British Intelligence, 1941-1945. London/Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature, 2019. ISBN 9783030151829.

Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Success of the Allied Secret Services, 1941-1945. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. ISBN 9781137555564.

Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Failure of the German Intelligence Services, 1939-1945. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ISBN 9781137427892

[With Claire Hubbard-Hall] ‘Landscapes of Intelligence in the Third Reich: Visualising Abwehr Operations and “Covert Space” during the Second World War’. Journal of Intelligence History (Published online by Taylor & Francis: 12 September 2020, pending assignment to journal issue).

[With Claire Hubbard-Hall] ‘Wives of Secret Agents: Spyscapes of the Second World War and Female Agency’. International Journal of Military History and Historiography 39 (2019): 181-207.

‘Neglected Narratives of Nazi Subversion’. Journal of the Iran Society 2, no. 16 (September 2017): 7-19.

‘Joe Spencer’s Ratcatchers: British Security Intelligence in Occupied Persia’. Asian Affairs: Journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs 48, no. 2 (July 2017): 296-312.

‘British Security Intelligence in Occupied Persia, 1942-1944’. Global War Studies 12, no. 1 (March 2015): 38-56.

‘The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI, and the Case That Stirred the Nation, by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, reviewed by Adrian O’Sullivan’, H-Diplo Review Essay 334 (16 April 2021).).

‘Blood, Oil, and the Axis: The Allied Resistance against a Fascist State in Iraq and the Levant, 1941, by John Broich, reviewed by Adrian O’Sullivan’, Journal of Military History 84, no. 2 (April 2020): 625-26.

Clark, J. Ransom. ‘Guarding the Door to the Persian Gulf’. Review of Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Success of the Allied Intelligence Services, 1941-45 by Adrian O’Sullivan. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 30, no. 2: 425-29.

Macris, Jeffrey. ‘Review of Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Success of the Allied Intelligence Services, 1941-45 by Adrian O’Sullivan’. Journal of Military History 81, no. 1 (January 2017): 267-69.

Martin, Venessa. ‘Review of Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Failure of the German Intelligence Services, 1939-45 and Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Success of the Allied Intelligence Services, 1941-45 by Adrian O’Sullivan’. Journal of The Iran Society 2, no. 15 (2016): 49-53.

Moll, Martin. ‘Review of Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Failure of the German Intelligence Services, 1939-45 by Adrian O’Sullivan’. Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies 8, no. 2 (2014): 153-55.

Paehler, Katrin. ‘Review of Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Failure of the German Intelligence Services, 1939-45 by Adrian O’Sullivan’. Journal of Military History 80, no. 1 (2016): 273-74.

Pasqualini, Maria Gabriella. ‘I servizi d’intelligence tedeschi in Persia dal 1939 al 1941’. Review of Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Failure of the German Intelligence Services, 1939-45 by Adrian O’Sullivan. Osservatorio Analitico (2 March 2016).

Pasqualini, Maria Gabriella. ‘Spionaggio e contraspionaggio in Persia durante la seconda guerra mondiale. 1941-1945’. Review of Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Success of the Allied Intelligence Services, 1941-45 by Adrian O’Sullivan. Osservatorio Analitico (3 March 2016).

Wynn, Antony. ‘Review of Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Failure of the German Intelligence Services, 1939-45 and Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Success of the Allied Intelligence Services, 1941-45 by Adrian O’Sullivan’. Asian Affairs: Journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs 47, no. 2 (May 2016): 306-8.