Follow that cab, and tip well

MIS5’s wartime gues to the art of being a spy now on display

- GAVIN CORDON

New recruits to MI5's "watchers" division during the Second World War received some highly practical - and occasionally unconventional - advice: avoid false beards, carry plenty of spare change for the Tube, and, if the moment comes to instruct a taxi driver to "follow that cab," make sure you're ready with a generous tip.

These instructions, part of a declassified training booklet for rookie operatives, are now on display at the National Archives in Kew, west London, as part of a new exhibition on MI5's wartime activities. Far from the glamour of screen spies, the booklet emphasises the demanding and often monotonous reality of surveillance work.

"Observation is a very onerous and exacting profession," it warns. "Screen sleuths of the secret service thriller or detective novel appeal to the uninitiated, but in actual practice there is little glamour and much monotony in such a calling as 'observation.""