Malcolm Mackintosh

John Malcolm Mackintosh, CMG, known as Malcolm Mackintosh, (25 December 1921 – 20 November 2011) was an intelligence analyst, civil servant, historian, Sovietologist, and author.

Early life and war service Mackintosh's father was dean of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He attended St. Mary's School, Melrose, Mill Hill School and Edinburgh Academy.

Post-war years Returning to the UK in 1946, Mackintosh resumed his studies at Glasgow, graduating with a first class degree in History and Russian in 1948. For the next 12 years he worked as a programme organiser in the BBC Overseas Service's Bulgarian and Albanian section. On graduating he had turned down the offer of a job with the Foreign Office, but he was employed by them as an interpreter in 1955 and 1956, when Marshal Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev visited Britain.

In 1960 he joined the Foreign Office as an intelligence analyst. In 1968 he was appointed to the Cabinet Office as senior adviser on Soviet affairs. In 1973 he was a member of the delegation that visited the Soviet Union with foreign secretary Alec Douglas-Home, being described by Soviet officials as a falsifier of history - a description for which he received an apology after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He retired in 1987, amongst his final achievements having been as one of the advisers who persuaded Margaret Thatcher that it would be possible to "do business with" Mikhail Gorbachev.

In retirement he continued to lecture and write, and took up a number of academic appointments, including at St Andrew's University, King's College, London and the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Publications Khrushchev and the Soviet Army, 1958 Strategy and Tactics of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1962 Juggernaut: a History of the Soviet Armed Forces, 1967 The Evolution of the Warsaw Pact, 1969 Soviet Foreign Policy : Its Many Facets and Its Real Objectives (contrib), 1972 The Middle East and the International System I. The Impact of the 1973 War (contrib), 1975