University of Warwick spy expert Christopher Moran has been awarded the 2014 St Ermin’s Hotel Intelligence Book of the Year Award.

Dr Moran picked up the prize for his book, Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain, at a ceremony held at the St James’s Park hotel in London this week. He was given his award by intelligence expert and the chair of the judging panel, Nigel West.

The St Ermin’s Hotel in St James’s Park, London offers this annual award for the best new intelligence book in recognition of the hotel’s long connection with the British intelligence community.

Dr Moran, Assistant professor in US National Security and a British Academy postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies, said he was delighted to be awarded the prize.

"To be acknowledged by leading authorities in my field is a great feeling – and came as a surprise, to say the least! More importantly, this award reflects the stimulating research environment of my department, PAIS, who have always been extremely supportive of my work".

The award is open to all non-fiction titles concerned with the world of intelligence and espionage. The judging panel also included literary agent Andrew Lownie; historian Daniel Julvenna; British intelligence analyst and lecturer Glenmore Trenearn-Harvey; and author and screenwriter Michael Smith.

The two other titles short-listed for the 2014 award were Roger Hermiston’s biography of notorious spy George Blake, The Greatest Traitor: The Secret Lives of Agent George Blake (Aurum Press), and SIGINT: The Secret History of Signals Intelligence 1914-45 by Peter Matthews (The History Press), an account of what Allied investigators learned postwar about the Nazi equivalent of Bletchley Park.