Gill Bennett, sets the political scene for the general election in 1924, which saw the Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald lose power. During the summer that year campaigns were run to discredit Labour and their ability to govern. The Zinoviev letter, which was published a few days ahead of the general election, first came to the UK via the Secret Intelligence Service as a telegram but very quickly made the rounds in London and was soon used against Labour when it appeared in the press.

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Gill Bennett MA, OBE, FRHistS is an Associate Fellow of RUSI. She was Chief Historian of the Foreign Office from 1995-2005, and senior editor of its official history of British foreign policy, Documents on British Policy Overseas. As a historian in Whitehall for over forty years, she provided historical advice to twelve foreign secretaries under six prime ministers, from Edward Heath to Tony Blair. In 1998, in her role as Chief Historian of the Foreign Office, she was commissioned to write a report into the Zinoviev Letter affair for the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook. A specialist in the history of secret intelligence, Gill published a ground-breaking biography, Churchill's Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence (2006). Her most recent book, Six Moments of Crisis: Inside British Foreign Policy, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013.

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