A Spy Alone - Interview with Charles Beaumont, Former MI6 Officer Turned Author

Do you love spy books, movies and TV, then the Spibrary Podcast is for you? Since 2017, host Shane Waley and Spibrary Field agents around the world dispatch reviews and interviews with authors, historians and fellow spy fans. We discuss everything from John LeCarrie, Len Dayton, Paul Vidditch, Graeme Green, Nick Herron, Charles Cumming, Ben McIntyre and many more. Spibrary is available on all good podcast apps at spybrary.com. Welcome to the Spibrary Podcast. My name is David Clark. I'm a member of the Spibrary Community and I'll be your host for today's episode. I'm pleased to be joined by our guest author, Charles Beaumont, which is a pen name or, should I say, cover identity of our former MI6 officer, who's debut novel, a spy alone has just been published in the UK. So welcome, Charles. Thank you. Pleasure to be with you. I should say before we start that in order to maintain Charles's cover, his voice is being digitally altered, which I think will make this the first Spibrary Podcast to feature actual trade craft, which I know will amuse some of you. So, Charles, let's talk about a spy alone first. I really enjoyed this book and the things that I took away from it is very fresh and over the moment it's located right in the midst of a major international crisis and the events that have led up to it and also very politically relevant, I think, specifically for the UK and describing the UK's political condition and its vulnerability to Russian interference in our democratic affairs. So, I thought really it's the only book I've read that has done that in such an effective way. Could you just without any spoilers describe generally the themes of the book and as much of the plotters you can do without giving away too much? Yeah, well David, what I've tried to do with this book is to explore what it would be like if there were a Russian spy ring operating now in this contemporary era in Britain. And clearly, listeners of this podcast will be well aware of that the history of the Filby and Blunt and all those people back in the Cold War. And I think I'm always fascinated by those stories and of course the literature that comes off them some of John the Carrier's greatest books are all wonderful, you know, high points in spy literature. But I suppose I felt that that is very much a Cold War framing and we are living in an age of Russian interference of a lot of cynicism in our politics and a post-ideological age. And I wanted to explore sort of whether such a phenomenon could be repeated in the modern era and to the extent that this is fiction, I think I've sort of illustrated that. In terms of the basic plot Simon Charman is the protagonist. He's a former intelligence officer. He is pursuing a not only successful career in the private sector and he starts what he believes is a sort of routine due diligence inquiry on behalf of a foundation looking into a big donation that's going to go to an Oxford college. As his work continues he realises that there's much more going on and this effectively leads him on a pathway to uncovering this spiring. And there's a lot of flashbacks to Oxford. The protagonist himself was a student at Oxford. And so it is well as being a novel about a contemporary spiring. It's a novel about an Oxford spiring. And of course people know about the Cambridge spiring back in the Cold War and it always been speculation as to whether there was an Oxford spiring. And so and again I'm trying to sort of play with that idea hopefully to the readers enjoyment. Yeah, one of the things I really took away from the book was the difference between Russian interference now and during the Cold War and the motives of those who from the Western end collaborate with it to some extent or another. And you brought out I think very effectively the political complexity of it now compared to what it was like in the past, obviously in the Soviet era those who collaborated with the Soviet intelligence services either did it in the early period, certainly for ideological reasons mainly and later for more mercenary means. But it's much more complex now and you convey I think the sense that people like Trump and others who align themselves to some extent or another with Russia. They do so because they think that they're using Russia as much as Russia is using them. And I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that and how that relates to the way in particular in the UK that Russia operates and how it successfully manages to influence our political affairs. Yeah, well I think you put your finger on it there in terms of we are in this post ideological age and clearly there's nothing about modern Russia that would lead a sort of ordinary person to look at it and think like you know I think this country is wonderful and I want to follow their vision for the future which was in some cases what was happening in the Cold War. But there are cynical people, people who have a particular worldview who think that they can cooperate with Russia and in so doing pursue their own objectives. And we see this in all kinds of and I'm not talking about the novel now where this is in real life. We see this in all kinds of areas so whether or not Trump himself was actively cooperating with Russia it's absolutely clear that people in his team were doing that. And there are examples across Europe of the Russians giving money to nationals of populist political parties. In Britain there are lots of examples of people for example helping Russian oligarchs, pursue journalists, lawyers or sort of PR types, there are bankers that are helping be Russian kleptocrats laundering their money. And as part of that there is definitely Russian influence in our politics and that you know that's been unpeeled most famously the Intelligent Services Committee report I think the so-called Russia report which of course was sat on in this country it wasn't published for several years possibly because it embarrassed a lot of people in power. Ideology still plays a role though I mean I'm interested by choice of post ideological because it's a comment that I hear a lot but although I understand what you mean by that, ideology does to some extent play a role even in the sense some of the characters in your book it's quite clear they share with Russia a certain outlook, it's soventist, it's nationalist, it's against liberal democracy, it's against what's now become known as woke. You know any idea of anything that's socially progressive, it's traditionalist and it's outlook you know believes in traditional values. It's sort of counter enlightenment, you know the sort of politics which has kind of re-emerged in the West in quite a serious way for the first time since the 1930s. That's all part of the background of course there are other people and these also feature in your book who really just only ever see a world of power and wish to align with power and money which is for them and that's sort of avatar of power and are extremely cynical. So it's a much more complex interplay of factors and motives that we're dealing with compared to the Cold War, is that also how you see it? Yeah definitely and I think I agree with you, ideology is important but in a way what you don't find is necessarily ideology on a spectrum. You know historically you'd expect people on the hard left to be more sympathetic to Russia or the Soviet Union and people on the sort of conservative right to be much more you know skeptical. Well what we see now is some people on the hard left who continue to argue that you know for example Ukraine is a fascist country and you know his Russia is somehow doing a great service to humanity by invading it to be clear I think as rubbish. But also you see people on the hard right who as you say align with this kind of very national sovereign test outlook that Putin has the idea that conservative family values are something that Russia supports. Intriguingly you know Russia has re embraced Orthodox Christianity and again for people who are embraced are very conservative social outlook they find that attractive as well. So you see this you see certain types of ideology finding it easy to align with Russia and it's very interesting and I'm sure we look at the Republican Party in the US very reluctant to commit to supporting Ukraine at the moment and a lot of that appears to be a sort of emanation of this tendency but there's a question maybe Russia could be our friends in this world maybe Russia has values that we can align ourselves with which of course is you know if you think about when the Republicans were during the Cold War it's an almost unbelievable transformation. Yes I mean I often wonder what Ronald Reagan would make of the Republican Party today you're right the characters in the book are very vivid I was so impressed by the way that you describe the characters you know it's full of really vivid descriptions of characters and their portrayal. In particular Professor McKenzie who's at the center of this web of conspiracy and his protégé Rory Goff who achieves a significance right towards the end of the book. And what I like was that you know although these were the sort of counterpoints to the world view of the protagonist they were the heart of this thought they're not too dimensional baddies you know their coherent characters with a world view that is recognizable and that's far more effective and unsettling actually I think than just having you know two dimensional baddies who are a foil for the protagonist. So that was good I wonder whether you could say a little bit more about the characters some of them are quite recognizable you know at least as character types and possibly even as actual individuals to some extent but I just wonder how these characters formed in your head. I'm not going to say you know that nobody's based on anyone but you end up we all respond to the people we've known in our lives and the people we know about. I mean I think we do live in an era of very sort of cynical political operatives and we live in an era where it appears that certain sorts of people can make lots of money and could have swung around the political world. and really nothing seems to touch them and they have sort of huge influence. They come and go for a number 10 downing street and that sort of thing. And so I wanted to sort of build someone like that as a key person in this novel. But again, as you say, these people aren't simply baddies because of course they're responding to the society in which we live. You mentioned Professor McKenzie, Peter McKenzie. So he is, you know, he's a sort of washed up oxford dawn, but he's also high influential. He writes newspaper opinion columns. He's got a sort of various editors and politicians that is back in cool again. I think that's a character that a lot of people can sort of recognize even if it is not a specific individual. And another thing I sought to do, the protagonist, he is not a superhero and there's the James Bond archetype and there's the George Miley archetype. But I think my protagonist may not even be a George Miley archetype, you know, he has to depend on people that he can work with. And I wanted that. But to me, it was an important part of the book because, you know, intelligence work is normally teamwork. The sort of the lone genius figuring everything out. I don't think it's very realistic so that we have another professor, Sarah Ducan, who's this very sort of, well, I hope, intriguing and gifted Russian linguist. And in a way, she's sort of the brains of the book almost more than the main character. The portrayal of your former service and the British intelligence services generally in this book is not particularly flattering. I think it's accurate in the sense that they come across as really quite disengaged from this issue. It's reflected, of course, in the Russia report produced by the intelligence security committee and parliament, which filled in 2016 that British intelligence services were not on the ball in spotting Russian interference and were really after that point, playing catch-up. So I wonder whether you think the Russia report's findings reveal shortcomings in British intelligence operations. Secondly, whether you think there are other things could and should have been done or can still be done to counter Russian interference. And whether you think the intelligence services have as a result of the criticisms contained in the Russia report and elsewhere, up their game since and are doing better in dealing with this issue. Yeah, well, I won't pretend I've got an insight on, you know, what's happening inside these organizations right now, but I think clearly a massive change occurred when Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That's a transformational moment. And in a way that showed the validity of the points being made in the Russia report, which was that we had not taken this right seriously enough. Certainly, I think it's a valid observation to make. Now, where I think it's important to separate out, there's the question of whether or not our intelligence services had good information and intelligence about what the Russians were plotting to do and, you know, their methodology is on. And of course, being on the outside, I can't judge that. But what they clearly were not doing was identifying the ways in which Russia was using its influence to corrupt our politics, to corrupt our media, to corrupt our professions. And that has been a very significant feature, I think, of the kind of post-Cold War story with Russia, you know, that London grad, as everyone's familiar with, became a preferred place for people to live, to spend their money, to launder their money, you know, talk about Chelsea Football Club, you know, for years no one could say publicly anything about that, for fear of being sued by a brother that says people. And of course, that meant British lawyers who would have been doing that for him. Now he's been sanctioned, he's had to give it up. So it's not in doubt that he was operating basically very close to or maybe on the half of Putin. So the last part of your question, you know, what should happen? I think we may need different structures because it, you know, Russia's not the only country that does this. A lot of countries seek to take advantage of our open society, basically use money and other methodologies to sort of interfere in our political structures and in other sort of influence operations. In Australia, they have a sort of separate organisation that exists to deal with those things. It's not clear to me that between the police and the security services and other bits of the British state, we are really structured to deal with that. You know, there's Russia, there's China, there are countries in the Gulf region and further afield, we should probably take it a lot more seriously. And I told you to attribute the failure really at the early stages of this to focus on it. Is it simply a question of being distracted by other priorities, budget constraints, or is it more structural in the sense that the intelligence services really are a bit squeamish about involving themselves and things that they consider to be domestic political affairs? And if so, how can that be addressed? Yeah, well, I think, you know, there's been a very interesting case study with Boris Johnson's relationship with the Lebanon family now for, you know, I should clarify, I have no reason to believe that, you know, there was some kind of an intelligence operation going on there because I don't know, but you can see how difficult it is when you have a foreign secretary who dispenses with his security detail and goes off to a kind of fairly sort of lurid event in a villa in Italy, hosted by a former KGB officer. That is very, very difficult for unelected, rather anonymous civil servants. That's, you know, that's what intelligence officers are to deal with. So that's one aspect. I think one is complacency, but I think there are a lot of interest groups in the well of middle classes in Britain. A lot of these people are doing very well from a system which takes credit to procrat money. It may not be just Russian money and long does it through our financial system. And then also provides ancillary services, legal PR, estate agency, private education, you know, there's a whole superstructure which exists to enable this. So was that not a large number of people? It's a large number of very influential and well-connected people who's the livelihoods depend on that. That's certainly true. When I asked now, and this will interest librarians, what your literary influences have been, what inspired you to write? Was it something that you'd always planned to do? Or was this something that occurred to you during your period as an intelligence officer? Or does it post date bad? I think it post dates that I really, I mean, like a lot of people, the experience of COVID made me think about whether, you know, I could turn my hand to this because I'm just sort of enforced in activity and so on. But I've always felt that I had a novel in me. I think they run such that. And I've certainly, you know, I've been heavily sort of influenced by particularly John McCarrie, but there's a sort of pantheon of great spy writers who I've sort of been heavily influenced by. And again, you know, the death of John McCarrie, not for a moment of my suggesting that I was going to take his place, I have far from it, but simply, it sort of spurred me to think more seriously about, you know, if you are going to write a novel, you've got to do it sometime. So it got me moving. What about your literary inspirations? Have you been an avid reader for a long time? Are your tastes genre specific or broader than that? Which authors have influenced you, do you think? Yeah, well, so in addition to McCarrie, I think in the genre, I think Len Dayton's brilliant. I think in a way, actually, he sometimes catches the kind of the atmosphere and culture of the sort of British state, even better than the carrot, which is amazing. I mean, Dayton's such a fascinating character, you know, never worked in any kind of official capacity. He has all these other talents as an artist and a generalist and so on, but I think particularly the sort of game set and that trilogy are phenomenal works. You know, I would say that I've enjoyed quite a lot of books in a sort of broader bit of a genre. So, you know, I love that sort of more adventurous style. It's someone like John Bucken, full-size, I think, writes very well. And then I like those ones who are not scared to be funny. I think Mick Heran is brilliant in that way. Often, Spy Literature takes its time with a bit too seriously. There's another writer that a bit less of our known as she's writing in the contemporary era Alex Finley, former CIA officer, and she writes sort of spoof, basically. And I just find them that they're very amusing, but that as funny books can be, there's still very repeating. Like, I must almost look those up here. Yeah, Alex Finley. There's a series of books where the character is Victor. So it's Victor and Trouble, Victor and various other scrapes and so on. I can recommend them. Yeah, and then there's two American writers. I think a less much less well-known particularly on this side of the poem, but really worth looking at. So, there's a guy called Robert Little who wrote the company, which is a big, so rapid novel about the CIA, really, really fascinating. And then David Ignatius, who, again, is quite well-known, writes thrillers or so writes, opets in Washington Post, I think, but his book called "Agence of Innocence" is a novel, which I think is one of the best sort of books ever written about the craft of spying. I'm about to read "Agence of Innocence" so I'm interested in the New York take on it, but I haven't read any David Ignatius yet. Robert Little, however, is a great favorit of mine. I read the debriefing earlier on this year, and it really is a wonderful book. I'm going to make it one of my reading goals for next year to read more of his books. One of the things I really liked about his style of writing is the humanism and the warmth of his portrayal of characters, which is really quite special and different. And you also, I think, successfully do that in your book. I think your characters are really well-developed and rounded in a similar way. But, you know, I'm interested, you've picked a couple of American authors because there is a conceit that somehow the Brits have cornered the market in cerebral spy fiction. And I think that's really wide of the mark. You know, when you look at Robert Little, you look at authors like Charles McCarrie and Alan First. I read my first Alan First a few weeks ago. It's terrific. The quality of the prose is really unique and high. So, Alan First, is he another author you've tried? Actually, I haven't read any of his, but I mean, in terms of, yet, I think American writers initially are definitely a particular recent years. And of course, we've got, as IS Barry and David McCloskey, both former CIA officers, who both publish brilliant books. Damascus State. And then the peacock and the sparrow by I asked Barry, which I've just read, and I thought that was very good and it really evoked The world of the Middle East to particularly the sort of height of the Arab Spring and all the sort of chaos and Confit they came out of it. I thought it was a fabulous book But in terms of my own influences, I would say I am as much influenced by books in the sort of generalist research rather than Spibots I grew up in a household where with two snobbish to allow things like John the Carrie onto the shelves So I only came to the Carrie relatively late in life But you know, I think I'm very influenced by the type of writer that is playful and You never quite that there's a unreliable narrator type and of course in this goes all the way back to Jonathan Swift Lawrence Stern people like that and then I'll receive it more recently I think I'm forced to some extent William goddess who's a great American writer. I think underappreciated and some people quit post-mondism with terribly pretentious But I guess the thing about spy literature is that you don't know whether the character is telling you the truth And that sort of part of the point of it and John the Carrie is all game is a great Case study of that way throughout the book There's this sort of description of a moment which the main character apparently you know an action the main character took I'm trying to avoid spoilers and throughout the book. You don't really know if this is a real memory or a kind of Falsified one and I think all games are really one of the Carrie's best books actually Are you on the hunt for your next thrilling spy read look no further Spybery contributor and Sunday times chief political commentator Tim Shipman has curated a list of his top 125 spy authors ranked With Tim's vast experience and expertise and politics and spy thrillers you can trust his judgment on the best spy authors of all time This list includes both classic and modern writers making it the ultimate guide for any spy fan But wait there's more Tim also recommends which book to try first from each author and he shares his favorite book from each of them too So you can dive right into the best of the best Ready to get your hands on Tim's list head over to spyberry.com forward slash top 125 to grab your free copy now Don't miss out on the ultimate spy reading list visit spyberry.com forward slash top 125 today Do you have a preference for era or setting when reading spy novels a lot of the members of the spyberry community have quite strong Preferences for Cold War or Second World War or post Cold War There's a make a difference to you are as a good spy story just a good spy story I mean, I think in general a good spy story can work in any setting. I can sort of understand But what makes the Cold War a great setting is that you have this very it's always like the rules of the game are very clearly laid out And then the literature can sort of correspond with those sort of guide rails if you like Having said that I really enjoy it when writers write about the modern era because you know There's this this idea that you can't write spy lecturing them on the era because that one has a phone and therefore They're always being trapped and you know those facial identity Technology everywhere and I sort of think I understand that that does put limitations on writers But I think in a way that then as writers we have to find ways around that because we can be sure that Spying is still happening. Yes, and of course there are lots of good opportunities as well as limitations for writers and in the the nature of the technological change And I think you managed to capture that in your book. I've also had a strong preference for Cold War stories because that was a moment of ideological Contest on a grand stage and I think it lends itself free to the dramatic kind of a narrative But say your book and David McCloskey's most recent book must go X I think have done better than almost any others of recent times and In conveying the sense of moment and urgency of real sort of geopolitical power struggles taking place than any others So maybe even where I point where the post-Cold War novel is about to come into its own Well, I mean if I kind of you to so put me alongside Dave McCloskey I mean, I think we are clearly at a global level in an era of extraordinary tension You know the war in Ukraine is continuing and a lot of people have sort of turned away from that because of other events in other places There is an epic conflict with China, which may be a military conflict It may be an economic conflict. It may be a combination of both but that is something which looms in front of all of us And there are profound questions. I think about whether the sort of democratic system that we've taken for granted in the So-called West, you know in the liberal democracies of North America and Europe and mainly in you know If you're in the Pacific obviously the question about whether this is a sort of sustainable model And so I think it ought to be the case that it's not about time to write books that you know sort of try to deal with those big questions One thought that occurred to me reading your book and reading David McCloskey's book I haven't read ISB or his book yet, but it's something I'm just about to do, I think Given that you're all three former Western intelligence officers Given that the Russians always take the view that there's no such thing as an expi And given that they assume naturally that everything that comes out of the West is in one form or another are kind of Information warfare against them. What do you think the Russians will have made of your book and David McCloskey's book because it will certainly have read them Well, it's I love the idea of some SVR officer being told to sit down and and work his way through my book And I hope you enjoyed it. He'll see. Well, interesting. I mean I suppose at risk of sounding a bit self-important Maybe they think that we're on to them and we have actually started to figure out the way they're doing That's now of course. I'm a private citizen, you know to be clear for those listening in Moscow and everywhere else No element of this book has any sort of editorial direction from anyone in any official post I wrote it because I felt like writing it not because I was you know was being told to do so by some other power I understand that in Moscow that that will be assumed to be just a you know a cynical lie by a profiteous Brit But yeah, I mean, I think we were playing catch up to use a time that you used But we have started to catch up and we are getting better We're getting better at understanding the insidious nature of what Russia has done as a result of that Ukraine will we've got better at doing things like sanctioning, you know, the more Egregious elements of the sort of Russian oligarchy But of course, there's a lot still there and one of the things I write about in the book Or be it just in a sort of fictional way is these sort of strange structures of offshore companies and shell companies And all these kinds of things that make it very hard not just for ordinary citizens, but even for enforcement agencies Really to understand, you know, whose money is doing what in our system? And I think we need to get better at dealing with that was it on your mind at all when you're writing the book This would be read in Russia and did it influence the way that you approach the book I mean, I know for example that you're the books going to be published in Ukraine Which of course they will again see as being a deliberate move of some kind who knows what but they will interpret it in some way And it certainly wants interpreted as being a kind of a random decision Was this part of the background of when you were thinking about the book and writing it? Well, to be honest, no, it wasn't Well, I think two things like Russia on one level, you know, Russia is highly effective It's intelligence agencies have, you know, for literally for centuries and certainly for decades Carried out all manner all the extraordinary things, but sometimes they can be quite incompetent and can be quite, you know Just take the example that invades of Ukraine itself, you know, Putin obviously believed that they'd be able to sort of marching to Kiev and no one would stop them So you have these kinds of that sort of dichotomy that exists in the Russian system And you know, maybe if someone reads my book and thinks that there's a truth underneath it and they go off and waste lots of time Trying to find, you know, secret spies buried in their midst. I don't really mind if that happens, you know, that might be amusing You've mentioned the fact that the book is going to come out in Ukrainian, which I'm quite excited about And it's just worth mentioning that, you know, the dedication that the book is dedicated to the people of Ukraine as they continue their fight for freedom And particularly now with attention perhaps drifting away from that That's something that means a lot to me personally, but I think it ought to mean a lot to anyone who cares about democracy There is a long tradition obviously of former intelligence officers and one or two cases, you know, serving intelligence officers like John Bingham, who've been novelist, become writers Stretching right back to the earliest days of the genre to now What do you think it is that explains the way in which former practitioners Really sort of dominate the genre in a way that isn't the case in any other genre. What's unique to the relationship between espionage and fiction that makes this happen? I think there's a few things. One is that it's obviously it is a very very interesting and, you know, sort of engaging type of work And it's one that if you're on the outside, it's very hard to know much about So, you know, if you were going to write a book about war, you might be a soldier but you can equally get an unbelievable amount of information Quite easily about what it's like to be in a war. It's much harder to do that with sort of intelligence work So I think that's one element of it. I think another element is that for all the intelligence agencies that I know about The writing of reports is a really important element of it and that's even for several operational officers, you know, that you are not just running around James Bond style, you never see him ever write a report. But in the real world, people have to spend a lot of time putting a lot of effort into communicating clearly what the information they've received is or what their source is dealing with, whether they're security threats and all those other sorts of things. So I think people are perhaps quite well set up to become writers if they've worked in that world. And also I suppose character, that's something that's common both to the intelligence trade and writing is that I for detail and character, motivation, what drives people, that's a part of it as well, I think. Yeah, because you know, handling an intelligent source is about understanding them and understanding their motivations, understanding the reasons they have for doing what they're doing. And of course, those reasons might include reasons that they might have not to be honest with you on reasons to mislead you, reasons to betray you. And of course, all of those things your betrayal is such an important element of all intelligence work. And of course, loads of great books are about betrayal, whether they're spy books or not. Yes, and I suppose that unlike, you know, any other profession, fiction is often the only form in which intelligence officers or former intelligence officers can talk about what they do because of the constraints of official secrecy that they're bound by even after they've left their services. So that's part of this desire to talk about their world, but in a way that doesn't get them into trouble like, you know, Compton McKenzie and others have come a cropper in the past by finding themselves in court for publishing things that they shouldn't have published. And that's a serious consideration and you know, both from one's own piece of mind, but actually I personally, and I don't know of anyone who would not take seriously their obligations of secrecy or not of protecting natural security. As readers will discover, my book is about a former intelligence officer. The main intelligence service involved is not a real organization. And you know, the real intelligence services barely get a mention and that was deliberate because I wanted people to be very clear, but this isn't a disguised version of some real thing that's going on inside MI5 or MI6. This is a work of fiction, which may, I hope give a lot of like feeling of sort of realism authenticity, but it is a work of fiction. Our spies, avid readers, the spy fiction in general, do you find, is this something that was discussed in the office in the days when you were in the service? Did you talk about fiction with other colleagues likes, dislikes, that kind of thing? I think to some extent, I think, you know, John McCarrie has such a huge, you know, his shadow looms so enormously over his world. And of course, he was albeit quite briefly a part of the British intelligence world. And there was often a debate about whether LeCarrie's books were overall sort of net positive or negative, in the sense that, I mean, for the reputation of British intelligence, because if you were going to, on the face of it, exactly the very negative, because it's almost all of LeCarrie's books have a sort of rather a struggling organization that is very cynical, but also ultimately often sort of gets done over by the Americans or by some other force. You don't read LeCarrie and sort of, and feel sort of suddenly, you know, that the Brits are brilliant in a way that sort of games bond with the Union Jack parachute stuff. But having said it all of that, I think LeCarrie presents a world that is sort of bigger than perhaps that British intelligence really is. It's what you might call a force multiplier. And I think actually that there's a very interesting left hand written to the economist by the former chief of the intelligence service in 2017, Alex Younger, where he makes this point that he sort of argues that the books of people like John LeCarrie tend to sort of increase the overall sense of influence and potentiality over our intelligence services. That's used to LeCarrie seem to change a lot over the years. I mean, he himself recounts the story of being collared by some former colleague at a cocktail party at some point and being, you know, almost threatened with physical violence over what was deemed to be his unfair portrayal of his former service. But by the end, he sort of had been almost I would say not quite adopted, but there was a much more friendly relationship between the intelligence world and LeCarrie and spy fiction in general. And what was it that you think explains that transformation of vatitudes? Well, I think a lot of it is just sort of maturity on the part of the secret state because we talk about British soft power and you've got the BBC Wild Service and you've got the Beatles and Premier League football. But also there is something about a writer who it's extraordinary the reach that LeCarrie had, you know, because I often read them, I get a lot from them, but I feel that they're very English and maybe even a slightly narrow part of England, you know, LeCarrie doesn't really write about working class English people ever. But be that as it may, he manages to reach an amazing global audience and I think it's sort of realisation that at the heart of it are flawed, but deeply moral people trying to do their best, both for their country and maybe for a higher purpose. You know, I think that exists in a lot of the carries world and it's easy to understand that people, if they sort of think about it a bit more judiciously, can understand that that is surely good for our country and not that he was part of some, you know, again, the people in Moscow might think he was part of a complex British soft power operation or, you know, he was totally wasn't, he was doing his own thing. And the character, George Smiley, although you wouldn't describe him as a hero in a conventional sense, there's an ability about him, which is really one of the reasons why such an engaging character, you know, there are reasons why he does what he does. He justifies it, you know, in his own sort of morally anguished way, justifies it as being a necessary thing. So, in actual fact, I think by the end of the Carla trilogy and the end of the Smiley novels with a secret pilgrim, you know, the picture that emerges of British intelligence, it isn't a particularly hostile one. It's one that's morally complex, but not, I think, deeply antagonistic or one dimensionally antagonistic. The pictures are much more complex one, certainly much more complex than the portrayal in a looking glass war. I mean, I can understand why there was a reaction against that because it's so bleakly negative that there's almost nothing redeeming about the portrayal of the intelligence world in that book. But, you know, by the later novels, I think, it's a very different and more rounded appreciation. Yeah, I have to say a lot, this is, you know, might be controversial. I actually think the looking glass war is best novel, but I mean, I think he also, a perfect spy is very interesting, because of course, it's a sort of, it's a parallel universe, there's no George Smiley, and it's Magnus Penn being this character who is the sort of Kim Philby character, but it's also very clearly John McCarrie, you know, all of his own life story and his con man father are there in the book. And that's again very interesting, because it's an extremely sympathetic portrayal of this man who's a traitor. It's sympathetic, but it's not telling you that he did the right thing, and I think, again, McCarrie's ability to navigate those really complex moral and ethical questions. You know, famously, he declined to meet Kim Philby when he made a visit to Moscow. McCarrie declined to meet him. You know, I think it tells us what you need to know that he was not somebody who sort of, in a slightly kind of delusional way somehow believed that, you know, Kim Philby had no other choice, which of course is, I think, was the name of the book. He wrote, or was that George Blake, but ultimately, he understood the ethical dilemmas that these people faced and understanding isn't the same, of course, as forgiving or excusing. Yeah, and there was that comment that McCarrie made about, you know, I think he wanted to set an interview, if he'd stayed in the service, he often wondered whether he'd have become a traitor. And I suppose the perfect spy has really set up the novelization of that thought. Yeah, it's about the alternative life that he would have had if he'd stayed, which I find fascinating. Is writing an ambition that's shared by other former colleagues, do you think more generally in the British intelligence world? I mean, there's a, I was interested in the podcast with I.S. Barry that she said that there's actually a club within the CIA of aspiring writers. I think she called it invisible ink. That's amazing. There's a CIA writer circle. Yeah, I just wonder whether there's anything analogous in the UK. I mean, I doubt it because the culture of the organizations is very different and everything in business still so buttoned up in some ways and formalized that and lacking the openness of the American world that I would doubt it. But is it an ambition you sense that colleagues generally tend to share or you an exception? I'm not going to say I know of lots of people who are planning that books. There are, of course, you know, there are a few former British intelligence officers who have published books as James Wolf who, I think, is familiar to many people, listening to this podcast. There is Alan Judd from a slightly earlier generation who wrote very good, very good novels. And, you know, he goes on, but I would say, no, I think it's still relatively unusual. And it may be that, you know, part of the reason for it being unusual is that, that no one really knows if they can or can't do it. And it's very British. The way these things are sort of regulated and dealt with, clearly in America, you hear I.S. Barry saying that she had her career declassified. And that was clearly a very sort of set out process, but nothing exists in that way in this country. Have you had any feedback from former colleagues about your book? Have you shared it so far with any of them? I have a couple, you know, people have enjoyed it, but ultimately I'm not sort of trying to push it under people's noses because I think if they want to read it, they'll find a way to it. You haven't been threatened at any cocktail parties yet. Not yet. I'm looking forward to that. So that'll be one of the exciting elements of having written this book. Can I ask whether you think that's in your experience spy fiction ever influences spy practice? I mean, obviously, there's a relationship the other way. But, you know, it seems to me that this is the relationship between the genres is very dynamic. It's not a sort of one-way street to the extent that actually it was fiction that really in some ways gave birth to the secret world because of the German spy panic of the early 20th century Started by William the Q and others was what formed part of the pressure for the formation of the secret service bureau So I'm fascinated by the way that the fiction and reality interact in in the spy world You're aware of fiction influencing the operations or the culture or the outlook and behavior of the secret world Yeah, definitely I think the thing to remember is that people working in that world have all the same cultural inferences that the rest of us have So when asked to think about secret agents they will think about James Bond because that is an overwhelming Cultural inference that exists in our society that they will think about that there are no laws of the current So I think in that sense it has a strong influence, you know, that there is a sort of it's usually a bit archer The bit of a raised eyebrow but the influence of the kind of James Bond culture and I don't mean in any practical active way of sort of unit licenses to kill but just the black tie and the sort of drama and all of that I think that inevitably it sort of reaches in and then I think in the sort of macarice sense I think the sort of valorisation of sort of intellect and hard hard graft of really sort of studying a puzzle I think again that that has sort of become something that I think is very much sort of appreciated in the world of intelligence What are the objects that define espionage? Right now in my hand is a pen with a hidden microphone If you've got a compass that is concealed inside one of the buttons on your jacket Maybe the Germans won't find it We're opening the archive and diving deep into their iconic designs Enigma is one of the most famous code machines of all time I'm Alice Lockstone and this is a history of the world in spy objects A new series from spy scape studios listen wherever you get your podcasts Can I ask about the pitfalls of writing as a former intelligence officer Given the obligations of secrecy regarding sources and methods And in particular something's like the portrayal of trade craft Obviously there's a limit to how much you can say about that when you're Describing something like that does it have to be wholly invented or can you to some extent Refer to to things that have a real-world counterpart Yeah, I might just draw on something that John McCarrie wrote about his own sort of answer to that question He said that he wrote something not that it was authentic But then it was credible and we could argue about one of those words mean different things or whatever But I think it's really more about the feeling than the actual practical activities There's people could go on the internet and go on YouTube and there's all kinds of Or some self-described ex intelligence professionals telling you how to spot you've got a tale or you know The secrets of the spy world you know there are so many of those sorts of things around so in a way The specific techniques that one might write into a book might not be particularly novel, but I think What I hope someone with my background could bring is the feeling and what it feels like to be trying to think about and my Followed and I spotted a follow-around those sorts of things and so I think that's the way you do it that it's Tradecraft if you think take the James Bond novels of you know There's always a kind of gadget certainly from what I know there's always never a kind of a gadget So it's not about a secret thing that we don't really know about it It's about how it feels and what the sort of human experience is all of carrying it out I'm told at the KGB actually you know dissected the Bond novels with particular attention on the gadgets to try and sort of figure out Whether these things were actually being used in some way or or whether they couldn't indeed be invented and used in some way Which I which always amuses me. Yeah, but yeah, I mean the opening passages if you're but describes a surveillance Street surveillance procedure and it describes this thing the box Which I think has now become a fairly sort of well-known sort of technique for surveilling people at a street level When the intelligence services read sort of spinels and they see me that these sorts of techniques have really become pretty well known Did they then have to go back to the drawing board and invent entirely new forms of trade craft to try and keep one step ahead? How do they deal with the kind of seepage of knowledge about the techniques that they use which is inevitable Even if it's often done accidentally actually Yeah, I mean, but that's absolutely right that there is seepage of knowledge and there always will be and of course I think Arguably it's even more serious when it's on the screen because you know It allows people very quickly to see something happening and sort of intuitive it the intelligence services always have to stay ahead of What is widely known and of course by definition it's important that the latest methods and the latest some of activities Remain the secret as I mentioned, you know, I write in this novel about a protagonist who recent A member of an intelligence agent, you know, he's a private citizen who'll be at one who has that background So to some extent what I'm doing is writing about a world that is very present You know that there are former intelligence agents who you can hire to So they'll someone you know, as long as they continue to obey the laws There are people who might teach you You know some of those techniques again legally because these are techniques which are already in the public domain Yeah, you hit on something there that really interested me about your book and it's touching on a real world phenomenon Which is the degrowth of this world of private intelligence whether it's driven by corporate interests or is driven by NGO activism increasingly through entities like Bellingcat and so on This seems to me that the intelligence activity is to some extent being privatized although that's not required the right word. It's now being taken on by non-state Agency and actors in a way that hasn't really been the case in the past. What's driving that is that partly because of the Difficulties or lack of interest of intelligent services involving themselves in this world of political interference And constraints that they have or is it being driven by something else you think well I think that's part of it that there are you know There's a lot of money sloshing around and that money can buy people with All kinds of skills and you know background in certain techniques and certain abilities But I think also you mentioned Bellingcat and you know for listeners who are not familiar This is a group a fairly sort of amorphous group of activists who have used open source Intelligence are basically sort of deep into that research to uncover extraordinary secrets particularly in the context of Russian activities such as the source group poisonings and so on Arguably they've achieved more than intelligence agencies were able to achieve and in a way We're living in an age where it used to be that secrets of the things that governments had and other governments tried to get them And I think now secrets are spread all over there are massive tech businesses But own unbelievable amounts of sensitive data And there are other people who are of course the hackers who are trying to get it that data So I think we're in a much more sort of anarchic world where Intelligent isn't just about what's happening in certain government agencies It surprises me how little fiction is really engaged with that shift And your book is really one of the reasons why it's so valuable is it's really the first to Take a proper look at it and to describe how that private world of citizen Intelligence and corporate intelligence interacts with the official world of spying in secrecy Do you think that the genre is now going to start looking at that more seriously because it certainly needs to be done It's a fertile ground for fiction, I would say Well, I hope so after all in the sort of classic detective fiction that the private detective is arguably much more important So character than the police detective constable So it perhaps we need that recognition that this world has changed And that therefore the protagonist and the so plot lines need to change with it Because there's certainly not a passing phenomenon I think this is now this this shift is really sort of a permanent thing So it will be enduring arena for fiction writers, I think Can I just ask sort of slightly a tangent about spying in film and television and portrayals on the screen of the espionage world Do you have any particular favorite films or television portrayals of spying? Which do you think capture the mood and reality of that world most effectively or which of the most entertaining even Yeah, well, I think to name one that we don't hear about very much anymore But I think was a brilliant film is spy game with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford And it has these sort of I think as a portrayal of a human intelligence relationship So your Robert Redford is the handler effect to read Brad Pitt is the kind of the field agent I think it's a brilliant movie and you know, it also it's it's got a high production values And as you know, there's a whole sequence set in bay route which is which is very evocative and so on Yeah, I enjoyed that a lot. I've enjoyed in more recent times Very much enjoyed the slow house adaptations I think they've they've taken what are very good books and then they've almost made the characters more engaging on the screen And then to my mind and and I suppose it helps me but very often involved but it does not just him You know, there's a whole set of really fun characters It tends to be on the screen But there's a pressure to make things a bit more sort of exciting and dramatic and sometimes of course You know, no wrong with that but sometimes I think it loses something in its ability to So portray the world realistically But there are two other shows. I've mentioned which feature is well So one is fouled it now. Is it espionage? It's perhaps more kind of special operations, but it's the first series of followers is Shutton, Italian, Arabic, and Hebrew is really, I think, is brilliantly done. And it's just a run-to-cover unit operating in Palestinian areas and perhaps, you know, highly relevant, given what's happening in the world at the moment. And then another show where the slightly similar concept, very much more in the espionage space, it's called Tehran. And it's about it, Israeli espionage recreations inside Iran. And at that, I think it's brilliant. I honestly think it, in terms of a sort of international espionage thriller, I think it's really, really, really well done. Of course, I haven't mentioned LeBioho, which, you know, the French one, which is also brilliant, but anyway, everyone knows that one already. But Tehran doesn't seem to have got so much attention. I think it's really worth a look. And the Bond films, do you still watch those and enjoy them or do they make you grown? No, I've always liked Bond films, but, you know, they're nothing to do with the real world. They're amusing and, you know, I joined everyone had, whether it made sense to kill him often in the most recent one, and how they're bringing back and all that sort of thing. I've always enjoyed Timothy Doulson. You know, again, I'm put to their opinions. I think he's an underrated James Bond. He has a minority of hardcore fans. No, you don't. And just to finish up, what's next for you? I got a sense at the end of a spy loan that you'd sort of set the ground for a sequel. Is this going to be part of a series, a long running series? Do you have ideas for other series or stand alone? What do you think you'll do next? Well, I'm definitely planning to write a trilogy on this sort of plot world. And of course, there is an oxidant firing. And there are 20 at the end of this book that remains unresolved. So that's something I'm intellectually working on. And in terms of wider things, I mean, I'm always encountering. As I'm sure lots of listeners is podcasts. I'm always encountering stories in the real world. Do you think that would make a really interesting novel? Or, you know, it sounds like a novel and those sorts of things. So there's lots to do. Just not enough time to write it down. Well, I'm going to look forward to whatever you produce next for sure. On the basis of your first book, it's going to be a case of being right to the shop on day of publication to get my hands on a copy because I really enjoyed a spy loan. And I'm very, very grateful to you for joining us for this podcast. So thank you very much, child moment. Well, David, thank you for the opportunity. It's been a real pleasure. [Music] Thanks for listening to the SpyBerry podcast. You don't have to wait for the next episode. Join the conversation happening now at facebook.com/spibrary And on Twitter and SpyBerry. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]