Where do you put the carbon paper?

Interesting little story in The Daily Telegraph this week which shows up quite how much the Internet revolution of the last decade is changing the world of espionage ... and consequently the environment for spy fiction.

MI:5 is reportedly making some significant staff changes to get rid of a number of more 'senior' staff who, the paper reports, are finding it tough to get to grips with the Interweb and, consequently, are less able to act as effective modern spying operatives. Reference is made to a "James Bond generation" of spies who cannot cope with the speedy advance of online communications. Hopefully, the HR bods in the service will check that in their efforts to get aligned with modern employment trends and make every spook web-savvy, they don't lose the collective knowledge and experience these agents will undoubtedly have.

While accepting that MI:5 and MI:6 no doubt must remain effective and adapt to all the advantages modern technology offer, one can't help wandering that the spy game 2.0 lacks a little of the 'art' and guile of the classic espionage world of Deighton, Le Carré, Ambler, Fleming et al, with its 'data centres', hidden cameras, short wave radios, secret drops, trefs and one-time pads. Real scope for cracking action, intrigue and suspense, in a time when secrets were secret ... at least, most of the time. The modern spy, with his iPhone and encrypted wireless, is faced with a world of information where little, it seems, is now "top secret".

But, of course, the great spy characters reflect the age in which they operate, and the best authors will reflect this and create stories that weave this information-rich world seamlessly into a breathless narrative.

I can't help thinking what 'Harry Palmer' or Bernard Samson would make of this modern incarnation of the spy business .... and laughing.

Bomber misses its target

News comes in today that Bomber by Len Deighton did not make the short-list for the  Lost Booker Prize, which is to be awarded for the best book of 1970, covering the year when the famous prize was not awarded.

Bomber's inclusion was somewhat of a surprise. Military fiction has never been that well regarded in literary circles, even though Bomber is much more than simply that. The Guardian has a report on the final short-list, which includes Muriel Spark and Mary Renault.

[Stop press] In a piece in today's Observer (online at the Guardian website), one of the judges Rachel Cooke describes the process of whittling down the long list to a short list, and her feelings towards the disparate novels she read.

On Bomber, she writes:

"I have just read 21 novels, all of which were published in 1970, and while a few could be described as polite, none was actively dull. Two – Bomber by Len Deighton and I'm the King of the Castle by Susan Hill – were so exciting, I read them at one sitting."

Boozy lunches and canapés

Had a very interesting evening tonight courtesy of Penguin Books' crime and thriller department. Thanks for the evening go to the author Mike Ripley, editor of the Shots Mag website, who got me the invite. Clearly, the 'blogosphere' is now a target audience.

In between glasses of white wine, the effervescent Ripley told me of his lunch with Len Deighton today in London, during which he got some books signed, caught up on news with Len and spent ages sharing stories about second world war military intelligence.

Sounds like a fun lunch!

Upcoming Canadian radio documentary on Deighton

I've spent the day with Philip Coulter, radio producer on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation programme Ideas. He is interviewing Len Deighton next week for a documentary on his work; less autobiographical, more about looking at how his fiction reflects the changing public perceptions of espionage and paranoia, and also the themes of betrayal, trust and loyalty.

We went on a walk around London visiting some of the locations in the Game, Set and Match series of novels, and I talked about their significance, how they contributed to the plot and character development and - to add some colour - read some key passages from the books in these locations. Fun to do; Coulter's a real fan of Deighton's writing and this trilogy in particular, and rates him a far better writer than Le Carré, for example.

Should be an interesting radio documentary when it's all finished - I'll post up details about when it's going to be broadcast. Hopefully, it'll be on the web too so we can listen along with the Canucks.

Town: a day in the life of Len Deighton (2)

Below is the second post looking at the article 'A day in the life of Len Deighton' from the August 1963 of Town magazine, then one of London's premier glossy men's magazines.

Town: a day in the life of Len Deighton (1)

Despite the growth of the Internet as people's main source of news and information, the magazine market still seems to be hanging in there. Back in the 'sixties, magazines were in a boom period, with increasing numbers of titles published aimed at ever more specific sections of the population.

One such high-profile, but short-lived magazine from the sixties squarely aimed at the growing middle class male readership was Town. Originally titled Man About Town, the magazine provided the launch pad for the Haymarket Group. A spin-off consumer magazine from the trade title, Tailor and Cutter, the intention was to turn this quarterly into a glossy monthly for men. Men's fashion was at the margin of acceptability and men's magazines relied almost entirely upon their willingness to peddle soft porn. Town never made much money, but in the 1960's it was very high profile and one of the magazines to be seen in for writers, actors and other celebrities.

I've recently purchased a copy from August 1963. In among the profiles of actress Susan Hampshire and a fascinating article on the diamond fields of South Africa is a feature called A day in the life of Len Deighton.

Written just over a year after he achieved reknown with the publication of The Ipcress File, this self-penned article provides an interesting insight into Deighton's lifestyle, his promotion to the upper leagues of London society and his idiosyncratic approach to writing and research in the days before the electric typewriter and word processer/PC. The photos - by Adrian Flowers - also show Deighton in the kitchen, where time spent was as valuable as at the typewriter. Over the next few blog posts I'll reproduce much of the article to give readers a feel for a London lifestyle that's well and truly (and regrettably) passed and, where it's helpful, provide a little commentary.
________

[Note: Although subtitled 'by Len Deighton', this chronological piece is written in the third person; the journalist is not identified by a byline. I suspect it might be that the photographer Adrian Flowers is also the interviewer, but it's not clear.]

AM

9.55

In an ugly little neo-Georgian flat near the Elephant and Castle the phone is ringing imperiously, but all is quiet for it has a whole packet of rayon blended household cotton wool screwed under its baseplate.

10.12

In response to continuous bell ringing, the door is opened by [sic] round-faced man in a moth-eaten dressing-gown. If he were in a slightly better condition Len Deighton could be called pudgy. As it is, he is undoubtedly fat. He shows me into the front room. It is dark in spite of the whitewashed walls, on one side of the room is a large black welsh dresser crowded with chipped antique porcelain. There is a severely wounded chesterfield, a stuffed warthog, a tea trolley laden with tubes of paint, brushes and jugs of dirty water and a Thonet rocking-chair in which three overfed cats jockey for position.

The reference to painting indicates Deighton's background as first and foremost at that time a designer and illustrator, who still did commissioned work for a while even after his first book came out.

10.18

I have heard the roar of the electric coffee grinder and the scream of a whistling-kettle and now the heavy aroma of rich coffee percolates through the flat. From the bathroom there is a steady thunder of the shower.

10.30

Len Deighton has emerged with two bowls of coffee. He has cut his chin shaving and there are specks of blood on the collar of the blue shirt with epaullettes and flap pockets. He sits down heavily and stirs his coffee in a distracted sort of way.

Drinking coffee from bowls is a French habit, one which I suspect Deighton will have picked up from time spent in France on holiday and studying French cuisine.

10.40

LD has finished his coffee. He phones his secretary who works in a different part of London. 'I also have an office in Russell Square', he says, 'but I've never sat down in it.'

'Why?' I ask.

'Because there are no chairs there,' he says, and gives a nervous giggle. He speaks to his secretary and dictates three letters over the phone. One is a complaint to BEA, who feel that they are not responsible for an hotel bill when they left LD stranded in Vienna with no planes flying. One is to The Times Literary Supplement, which has just published an article about The Ipcress File and the last one is to his literary agent about two new clauses in a contract for Finnish translation.

What is evident here is how much attention and cachet Deighton has achieved in just under two years as a writer: the multiple offices, the numerous foreign editions, the secretarial service, a high profile article in a major monthly magazine. While not an overnight success, it points to the way Deighton's prose style, his apparently anti-establishment approach to what was then a literary genre of gentlemen spies and Oxbridge-educated mandarins had grabbed the public's attention.

10.55

He runs fingers through his moth-eaten hair-cut and walks across the room. 'Like those?' he asks. He is pointing to two icons that hang above the fireplace. 

'Yes,' I say doubtfully.

'Made 'em out of balsa wood and paste' - as though he expected to surprise me.

11.10

The phone rings (LD has switched the extension bell on). It is the Observer. LD has a horror of answering telephones so his beautiful wife generally cases each caller. LD takes the phone. The Observer wants to know whether he can locate an anarchist for a lecture at a provincial university. He suggests a couple of cafés they can try. Capping the phone, he says to me 'Not so many anarchists about lately.' I nod. 'Used to be a lot about at one time,' he says. 'Really?' I say. LD replaces the receiver and walks across the room. He picks up a small prickly ball and throws it to me.

'Sniff that,' he says. I look at it. It is an orange stuck with so many cloves that you can't see the peel. I sniff it. 'Great, eh?' LD says. 'Yes,' I say.

11.30

LD goes into the kitchen. In front of him is a rough pencil draft of his cooking-strip for the Observer. 

'This is boeuf bourguignon,' he says. He is cutting up meat and carrots and hurling them into a frying-pan where butter is dissolving. 'Leg of beef is best,' says LD. 'It needs long cooking but the flavour is there.' He takes the pencilled draft and crosses the word 'brown' through. He writes 'sear' in its place. 'Sear cubes of 2lb leg of Beef,' the recipe now says.

'Did you work your way through all the recipes in the Action Cook-book [sic]?' I asked him.

'Have you read the Action Cook-book?' he said in a faintly surprised way.

'Cape's sent me a review copy,' I said.

'You'd better not use it,' LD said, 'the recipes in the review copies have got deliberate mistakes.' LD laughed a great deal as he said this, and the end of his tie went into the saucepan. The kitchen is about the size of a gigantic telephone box. Across one wall is a row of tarnished copper pans and under it a shelf where balls of string, pistachios, coffee, brandy, tinfoil and a dented red tin that says 'A Coronation souvenir June 1953' a picture of Balmoral Castle on it. By now there are four gravy spots down the front of his shirt. I point this out to him. He fingers the material proudly and says, 'Netherlands Air Force: 8s 6d.'

'Yes,' I say.

More of this fascinating article in future blog posts.

A Spy Story mystery....solved?

The American edition of Spy Story which I've just purchased, says this on the dust jacket cover:

"He is back after five years' long absence, the insubordinate, decent, bespectacled English spy who fought, fumbled, outwitted and survived his outrageous way through the best-selling Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin and the rest of those marvelous, [sic] celebrated Len Deighton spy thrillers. One again, he finds himself a reluctant habitué of that nightmare world of espionage where a triple cross is as commonplace and regular as the daily paper at the breakfast table. Nothing's changed!"

On a first reading  - and this was the case with me first-off - it's easy to think that this is the same no-nonsense, anti-authority tough-guy spy who took on the Gehlen network and Colonel Stok in the 'sixties thrillers which initially brought Deighton to the public's attention.

There are textual clues that he's the same man: he works for W.O.O.C.(P)., the same department as 'Palmer'. He narrates the story. He's something of a ladies' man. Early on he meets Dawlish, the boss from the earlier stories; Dawlish tells him, "New name, new job, the past gone forever...But you can't wipe the slate clean. You can't forget half your life." The character is described as in his late thirties, which fits with what we know of the unnamed spy. So, all pretty clear cut.

However, despite what publishers Harcourt Brace Jovanovich chose to put on their dustcover, something had changed.  The character of Patrick Armstrong in the book was not the same unnamed spy who had appeared in Deighton's first spy novels. In the introduction to the Jubilee edition, Len Deighton confirms that, despite much speculation at the time, it is not the same unnamed spy:

"Patrick Armstrong is not the man from The Ipcress File, although he's obviously a close relative."

Edward Milward-Oliver, Deighton's sometime biographer, in his book The Len Deighton Companion, also writes:

Armstrong, Patrick. Work name of the narrator of Spy Story, who if not our overweight friend from The Ipcress File, is certainly a close relative.

So, why is the reader teased in the text to a different conclusion? And why do the US publishers present quite the opposite? Even in their efforts to address ambiguity, Deighton and Milward-Oliver leave open the hint that it might be the original hero. What does "close relative" mean? Is that literal or figurative, i.e. he's derived from the same character? What is a 'work name'? Deep cover, perhaps, for his role?

A number of answers suggest themselves.

First, ambiguity helped the characterisation. In having the hero as the narrator, we understand his character from what he says and does and how others interact. Without a third person narrator giving context, there is ambiguity; the reader is asked to question whether the character is all he seems to be, and if everything he reveals about himself is true.

This was true with Deighton's character Bernard Samson, who is revealed in Spy Sinker - narrated in the third person, not by Samson - to be not as clued-up and as expert a judge of character as he himself thought. So, in having the 'Patrick Armstrong' character draw some dotted lines back to the first hero, without explicitly demonstrating he is that character, Deighton is able to draw on the best dramatic aspects of the former character but adapt it for a new story and a new milieu.

Second, marketing purposes. The 'Harry Palmer' character was a huge hit, both in the book and film markets. He broke Deighton in the US market and would have been regarded as a banker. By playing on the character's ambiguity in the text, the publishers could be assured that - directed that way - readers would assume it was the same successful character, and give sales a boost. After all, would the market that lapped up the first five books be up for the introduction of a new character?

Third, simple screw-up. I've no information about the contract for the US rights for the book or the marketing plan, but certainly there's nothing in the UK marketing which plays up the 'is he, isn't he?' aspect of the main character as blatantly as the US version. The dust-jacked of the UK first edition says nothing other than presenting review quotes from earlier books. It might well be that on reading the book, the marketing people at HBJ thought, 'hey, let's give the public more of the same,' and ran with it.

Of course, thirty five years or more after the event nothing's absolutely certain; but, we should probably take the author at his word and conclude that it's not .... exactly the same character. But plenty of journalists, reviewers and bloggers have been taken in nonetheless.

So, mystery solved? I'd be interested what readers of this blog think.

More great British thrillers get a new lease of life

Mike Ripley, thriller writer and editor of the excellent Shots online magazine about British thriller, crime and espionage writing, has sent out news of more developments by new imprint Ostara Publishing, which is specialising in putting back out on the market long-forgotten British thrillers with the aim of attracting a new generation of readers.

Ostara is issuing four more titles in their print-on-demand Top Notch Thrillers series. Ripley set up this new company to, he says, "revive Great British thrillers which do not deserve to be forgotten”. The new titles, originally published in Britain between 1962 and 1970, were selected by Ripley, who is the series editor for this new imprint.

The Tale of the Lazy Dog by Alan Williams is a heist thriller set in the Laos-Cambodia-Vietnam triangle in 1969 as a mis-matched gang of rogues and pirates attempt to steal $1.5 billion in used US Treasury notes. Time Is An Ambush is a delicate, atmospheric study of suspicion and guilt set in Franco’s Spain, by Francis Clifford, one of the most-admired stylists of the post-war generation of British thriller-writers. A Flock Of Ships, Brian Callison’s bestselling wartime thriller of a small Allied convoy lured to its doom in the South Atlantic, was famous for its breathless, machine-gun prose and was described by Alistair Maclean as “the best war story I have ever read”. The Ninth Directive was the second assignment for super-spy Quiller (whose fans included Kingsley Amis and John Dickson Carr), created by Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor) and is a taught, tense thriller of political assassination which pre-dated Day of the Jackal by five years.

Of these new reissues, Mike Ripley says: ‘Our new titles are absolutely in line with the Top Notch ethos of showing the range and variety of thrillers from what was something of a Golden Age for British thriller writing. They range in approach from slow-burning suspense to relentless wartime action and feature obsessive, super tough, super cool spies and some tremendous villains. Above all, they are characterised by the quality of their writing, albeit in very different styles.

‘When first published, these titles were all best-sellers and their authors are among the most respected names in thriller fiction. Many readers will welcome these novels back almost as old friends and hopefully a new generation of readers will discover them for the first time.’

As a critic and editor of the Shots website Ripley has shown that he has an eye for understanding what readers are interested in and the potential for injecting new vigour into the British thriller genre by drawing on the lessons of the past. These new books sound pretty cool, and I'm sure readers of this blog would want to check them out.

Matt Lynn selects his choice of great British thrillers

Up on the excellent The Browser website, in its Five Books selection - which invites authors to select the best reading in their field of interest - thriller and military action novelist and ghost-writer Matt Lynn selects his choice of the five best thrillers.

His choices would correspond to many a top five list from readers with a keen interest in British spy and political thrillers. He cites Eric Ambler, Frederick Forsyth and Hammond Innes in his top five books.

Also there is Len Deighton's Berlin Game, which Lynn says is the best Cold War thriller he's read. He also makes an interesting observation about the espionage thriller as the extension of the 'politics' of the office:

"All spy fiction is really an extended metaphor for the office. No character captures that better than Bernard Samson, a middle-ranking intelligence executive, who can’t trust anyone."

I haven't come across The Browser before but it's an excellent news aggregation website packed full of the best writing from around the world selected by its editorial team. Well worth a look.

81 candles on the cake...

Today, 18 February, is the birthday of Len Deighton, inspiration for the Deighton Dossier blog on all things spy fiction.

I'm sure the many readers of his fiction around the world wish him 'Many Happy Returns'.

In his 1989 book The ABC of French Food Deighton has this to say on the subject of how a gourmet should celebrate a birthday:

"Pate a choux is hot-water pastry that is piped into shape while still warm, like icing on to a cake. Best known as the éclair or the profiterole, or cheese-filled appetizers. Such pastry filled puffballs are stuck together with caramel and assembled to become a tall pyramid (the croquembouche) or the St Honoré that was at one time the Frenchman's traditional birthday cake. Now my local patissiere tells me birthdays are celebrated with 'American style' layer cakes."

What's the betting Mrs Deighton's whipping up a St Honoré today?

On the road and on the T

I've found an interesting new philanthropic effort by a company called Out of Print, which produces t-shirts with illustrations from famous book covers now out of print.

Out of Print celebrates the world’s great stories through fashion. Its shirts feature iconic and often out of print book covers; some are classics, some are just curious enough to make great t-shirts, but all are striking works of art. They work closely with artists, authors and publishers to license the content that ends up in our collections. The nice thing is that for each shirt they sell, one book is donated to a community in need through our partner Books For Africa. So, it's not only a great gift but you make a worthy donation to improving literacy and education in Africa.

One of the items they have for sale is a t-shirt with Len Deighton's 1958 cover for André Deutsch of the UK edition of Jack Kerouac's seminal On the Road. As most readers are still not aware, before becoming a writer of note Len Deighton was a respected artist and illustrator, part of the fifties new wave in British design (along with the likes of Peter Blake, designer of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) breaking from convention in design and adopting changes like bolder use of colour, abstract, print and other new modes of illustration.

This famous cover - a top seller in poster form - is redolent of Deighton's style, with the blocks of simple colour, the heavy black outlining and the jerky, sketched nature of the drawing. Deighton went on to produce at least 40 other cover designs for André Deutsch during a period when the publishing world was moving away from simple designs to more complex covers. In 1962, with the publication of Deighton's own The Ipcress File, his designer friend Raymond Hawkey defied publishing convention with the first book cover with the majority of it white; up till then, covers had never been produced in white as booksellers found that they became dirty after being handled by customers.

All-night bomber raid?

Another interesting little follow-on article in The Independent this week following the announcement of the long list for the Lost Man Booker Prize from 1970 (see postings below), for which Bomber is on the long list.

Arts critic Tom Sutcliffe is clearly busy as a bee reading through some of the novels for the Man Booker prize, judging by the second piece in his column, as he has found the pleasure of reading books in one sitting. His contention is that doing so brings something different to the reader's experience of a book.

He seems, as a result, to be anticipating a positive reaction for any of the Lost Man Booker Prize judges reading Bomber in one go (a real challenge - it's 560+ pages):

"I strongly recommend that when they read Len Deighton's terrific novel Bomber – which follows the events of a single wartime raid over the Ruhr – they buckle up on page one and don't unclip the straps until it's all over. It's very good in parts... but I bet it's absolutely terrific as an unbroken whole."

Guardian blogger roots for Deighton 1970 Booker win

Guardian blogger Sam Jordison has written an interesting comment piece on yesterday's story of the Lost Man Booker Prize from 1970, for which a panel of three judges is producing a short list of novels from that year which missed out on the chance of winning the Booker Prize due to changes in the competition.

Jordison writes that Bomber by Deighton is an intriguing case, given the company it's in on the list, and wonders whether the snobbery of the literary elite may play against it, the book being firmly rooted in the thriller/war story genre:

"It's a moot point. What I am sure of is that if they had dismissed Deighton, they would have been wrong. He is a superb writer, long overdue serious recognition from the literary establishment, so Booker can only be applauded for his nomination. I recently re-read his Game, Set and Match trilogy and the novels seemed stronger than ever. The fact that they now tell of a (thankfully) lost era has only sharpened their edge, while the grumpy, messed-up and too-often-messed-with Bernard Sampson is one of the most compelling characters in recent fiction."

Jordison is clearly a fan of Deighton and marks Bomber out as a dark horse for winning this unusual competition; he read it twenty years ago, recalling the sweaty palms of excitement as he turned each page, the sign of a compelling story:

"I'd be tempted to aim the much-overused word masterpiece at it. But don't take it from me. Take it from Kingsley Amis, who rated it one of the top 10 British novels of the 20th century. As the author of Lucky Jim (which might just squeeze into the top five), he ought to know what he's talking about!"

I may follow Jordison's example and put a couple of quid on Deighton to win!

Bomber omission? Deighton up for prize ... 40 years after the event

In 1984 writer Kingsley Amis named Len Deighton's Bomber as one of his 99 books of the twentieth century. 40 years on from its publication, Bomber may be up for another - albeit belated - prize.

Len Deighton is just one of a panoply of great British authors - including Susan Hill, David Lodge, Ruth Rendell and Patrick White  - who are being given the chance to win the Man Booker prize, forty years after the prize should have been awarded. The Lost Man Booker Prize, which has been unveiled today with some good media coverage, is a one-off prize to honour books published in 1970 which missed out on the opportunity to win the Booker Prize.

As the official Man Booker Prize website states: "In 1971, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became, as it is today, a prize for the best novel in the year of publication. At the same time, the date on which the award was given moved from April to November. As a result of these changes, there was whole year's gap when a wealth of fiction, published in 1970, fell through the net. These books were simply never considered for the prize."

Three judges - all of whom were born in or around 1970 - has been appointed to select a shortlist of six novels from those books. They are journalist and critic Rachel Cooke, ITN newsreader Katie Derham and poet and novelist Tobias Hill.

Their shortlist will be chosen from a longlist of 22 books which would have been eligible and are still in print and generally available today. Bomber is on that shortlist. 

It would be nice to think that fans of Deighton's wartime fiction could get an opportunity to vote for Bomber if it appears on the shortlist. But that is in the say of Cooke, Derham and Hill...and Deighton's up against some stiff competition. Let's see if they make a wise choice!

The long list in full

Brian Aldiss, The Hand Reared Boy
H.E.Bates, A Little Of What You Fancy?
Nina Bawden, The Birds On The Trees
Melvyn Bragg, A Place In England
Christy Brown, Down All The Days
Len Deighton, Bomber
J.G.Farrell, Troubles
Elaine Feinstein, The Circle
Shirley Hazzard, The Bay Of Noon
Reginald Hill, A Clubbable Woman
Susan Hill, I'm The King Of The Castle
Francis King, A Domestic Animal
Margaret Laurence, The Fire Dwellers
David Lodge, Out Of The Shelter
Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat
Shiva Naipaul, Fireflies
Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander
Joe Orton, Head To Toe
Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven
Ruth Rendell, A Guilty Thing Surprised
Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat
Patrick White, The Vivisector

He's the Mole from the Ministry*

Interesting article up on the BBC website this week about Stephen de Mowbray, former MI:5 agent who left the agency in 1979 after senior officials failed to take seriously his allegations of Soviet infiltration high up in the security service. He has come to the surface, so to speak, following last year's publication of the official history of the Secret Service, Defence of the Realm.

In the book, De Mowbray's claims are the subject of a chapter subtitled "Paranoid tendencies" which recounts his work as well as that of two colleagues, Peter Wright (author of the controversial Spycatcher) and Arthur Martin. The book quotes an MI5 director saying of the group: "Involvement in counter-espionage cases induces in some a form of paranoia." De Mowbray himself is referred to - although not by name - as "the leading SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) conspiracy theorist"; he is connected to the work of 'spycatcher' Peter Wright, whom the government sought to silence in the eighties for his embarrassing revelations about the service. The official line seems to be that in his search for infiltrators de Mowbray became over-zealous and prey to the exaggerations of the agents providing the information.

It's an interesting article which is definitely worth reading; gives another angle to the 'official' perspective offered in Defence of the Realm. Of course, infiltration in the secret service is a familiar subject in spy fiction - I mean, it forms the main plot theme for Len Deighton's Game, Set and Match trilogy, in which the main character Bernard Samson uncovers what he thinks is a Soviet infiltration at the highest echelons of 'the department'.

[* XTC fans may get in title reference to the track from the Dukes of Stratosfear's 25 o'clock album!]