Andrew Cook worked for many years as a foreign affairs and defence researcher. The contacts he made enabled him to navigate and gain access to classified intelligence services archives and write the definitive biography of MI6 agent Sidney Reilly, seen by many as the template for Ian Fleming’s James Bond, which was published in 2002.
He was only the fifth historian to be given special permission, under the 1992 ‘Waldegrave Initiative’ by the Cabinet Office, to examine closed MI5 and MI6 documents not seen by any previous biographer of Reilly.
As the result of the intelligence service archive research undertaken on the Sidney Reilly book, and tracing the families of key players in the story, he was able to locate further previously unseen documents on two of Reilly’s secret service handlers, William Melville and Major John Scale. This resulted in two milestone books on Melville’s life and role in the founding of the British Secret Service (M: MI5’s First Spymaster – 2004), and Scale’s pivotal role in the assassination of Grigori Rasputin (To Kill Rasputin – 2005). All three books resulted in BBC Timewatch, Channel 4 and Channel 5 history documentaries, on which he acted as Consultant.
In 2006 he acted as a consultant to US authors Bill Kalush and Larry Sloman on their New York Times bestselling biography of Harry Houdini, and also contributed research to the official histories of MI5 and MI6, published in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
The 2009 ‘The Real Goldfinger’ TV documentary, presented by James Bond star Honor Blackman, was based on new William Melville documents that came to light in 2007 about a German plot to blow up the gold vaults of the Bank of England. In the same year, he was granted Russian government permission to research in State and National Archives in Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, where he uncovered new evidence about the captivity and death of the Russian Imperial family in 1918. This resulted in the book ‘The Murder of the Romanovs’. He returned to Russia the same year with a Channel 4 film crew to make the TV documentary ‘Three Kings at War’
In 2010 he gained exclusive access to over two thousand pages of closed file material held by Royal Mail and the Metropolitan Police, on the Great Train Robbery, variously closed for periods up to 2060. There followed three years of research, resulting in the 2013 publication of ‘The Great Train Robbery: The untold Story from the Closed Investigation Files’. This led to a Channel 4 TV documentary and the much-acclaimed "Chris Chibnall films 'A Robber's Tale' and 'Copper's Tale' (2013)," which starred Jim Broadbent, Luke Evans, James Fox, George Costigan, Paul Anderson, Robert Glenister, Martin Compston, and Jack Roth.
In 2013 his best-selling book ‘1963 – That Was the Year That Was’ was featured on BBC TV’s ‘Meet the Author’ programme. The ‘Ian Fleming Miscellany’ was published in 2015, based principally on previously unused research from the Sidney Reilly and William Melville projects and new previously closed records.
In 2019 he took part in a second Channel 4 Great Train Robbery documentary, ‘The Missing Tapes’, which resulted in the Covid-delayed book ‘No Case to Answer: The Men who Got Away with The Great Train Robbery’ in 2022.
Access to new MI14 intelligence material on the Gestapo, and the families of several key MI14 operatives, resulted in the book ‘Crimes of the Gestapo from the Closed Files of MI14’.
He has been a contributor on espionage history to The Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Express, History Today and the BBC History Magazine, and has appeared on national radio and television.
Andrew Cook regularly lectures in the UK and abroad on the subjects of his book, films and documentaries.