Modern spy novels and 007 movies have created a highly romantic image of the British secret agent. While the British Secret Service undoubtedly contained men as handsome and as charming to women as James Bond, the majority of its successful agents were not particularly good-looking. Perhaps the most remarkable British agent was a man named McMorrough Kavanagh, whose undercover work was masked by his extreme physical disabilities. Kavanagh was born in the mid-nineteenth century with neither arms nor legs, the result of his mother’s having had German measles during her pregnancy. Despite his handicaps, Kavanagh achieved more expertise than most men in the skills he undertook to learn. As a child, he learned to ride while strapped into a special saddle, and he wrote and painted with a pen and brush between his teeth. He fished, and he even became an excellent hunter, using his arm stumps to manipulate a shotgun adapted for him. That Kavanagh was disabled seems almost unbelievable when one considers the life he led. As an adult he traveled with two other men for months across Russia, the Near East, and India, often under harsh and dangerous conditions. When Kavanagh’s companions died of disease, he survived alone, killing tigers in the Indian jungle. At this point, in order to earn a living, Kavanagh became a rider for the East India Company, a trade organization involved with the undercover activities of the British Secret Service. For those interested in real-life adventures, the diaries of this unlikely spy have fortunately been preserved.