0:00:05 > 0:00:07In an age of mass surveillance,
0:00:07 > 0:00:10spies may be a little easier to spot.
0:00:12 > 0:00:14But how about a spy novelist,
0:00:14 > 0:00:18and in one of their traditional clubby haunts?
0:00:19 > 0:00:23In this series, we're looking at the conventions of popular fiction,
0:00:23 > 0:00:27and now I'm going to investigate one genre that is both
0:00:27 > 0:00:31a British invention and has mirrored much of our recent history.
0:00:32 > 0:00:36The espionage novel, despite its often complex
0:00:36 > 0:00:38atmosphere of deceit
0:00:38 > 0:00:42and intrigue, relies upon clear rules.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46These rules have offered the British spy novelist a template
0:00:46 > 0:00:49from which to plot the perfect spy novel.
0:00:49 > 0:00:53In this programme, I'm going to slip off to the covert world
0:00:53 > 0:00:58of the British spy to try to crack the codes behind these books.
0:01:01 > 0:01:04Spy fiction, more than any other kind of fiction,
0:01:04 > 0:01:08actually reflects the political and social conditions of the time,
0:01:08 > 0:01:12and therefore the rules are constantly being rewritten.
0:01:12 > 0:01:14Unlike other fiction genres,
0:01:14 > 0:01:19tales of spooks are often written by people with an insider's knowledge.
0:01:19 > 0:01:25Real experiences have fundamentally shaped the spy story's development.
0:01:25 > 0:01:27Were you, in fact, the third man?
0:01:27 > 0:01:29No, I was not.
0:01:29 > 0:01:31Philby himself didn't think very much of your novel,
0:01:31 > 0:01:33Spy Who Came In From The Cold, did he?
0:01:33 > 0:01:35No, indeed, quite rightly.
0:01:35 > 0:01:38I haven't yet found a communist who did.
0:01:38 > 0:01:41But despite gripping us with their ripping yarns
0:01:41 > 0:01:45for more than a century now, espionage novels also
0:01:45 > 0:01:49have a strange allure because at their heart
0:01:49 > 0:01:54are rich, dark ideas about betrayal, deception, identity
0:01:54 > 0:01:56and courage.
0:01:57 > 0:02:01Who amongst us has not lied
0:02:01 > 0:02:03or felt betrayed?
0:02:03 > 0:02:07Who has not altered aspects of their identity -
0:02:07 > 0:02:09their voice, their appearance -
0:02:09 > 0:02:11to blend into different surroundings?
0:02:14 > 0:02:17The espionage novel isn't simply a cloak-and-dagger affair.
0:02:17 > 0:02:21At its best, it throws a harsh light on the human condition.
0:02:23 > 0:02:24Ssshhhh.
0:02:41 > 0:02:44SIREN WAILS
0:02:47 > 0:02:50Berlin was, and remains in our imaginations,
0:02:50 > 0:02:52synonymous with espionage.
0:02:53 > 0:02:57And it was here that much of the rule book of the modern spy novel
0:02:57 > 0:02:58was laid down.
0:03:03 > 0:03:06In late 1961, at the height of the Cold War,
0:03:06 > 0:03:12a young man, just turned 30, came and stood here and looked on,
0:03:12 > 0:03:18as he said, "In a mute frenzy, in disgust and terror"
0:03:18 > 0:03:22as the foundations of the Berlin Wall were hammered into place.
0:03:26 > 0:03:29The young man was working at the British embassy in Bonn,
0:03:29 > 0:03:34but that was a cover for his real job as an MI6 operative.
0:03:34 > 0:03:36His name was David Cornwell,
0:03:36 > 0:03:39but he would soon become much better known by his pseudonym -
0:03:39 > 0:03:41John le Carre.
0:03:44 > 0:03:47For the first and perhaps the only time in my life,
0:03:47 > 0:03:54I really felt extremely, virulently anti-communist about Berlin.
0:03:54 > 0:03:56Watching the wall being built,
0:03:56 > 0:03:59that was like seeing one's first dead body,
0:03:59 > 0:04:04that was an absolutely appalling sight of monstrous cruelty.
0:04:06 > 0:04:10Le Carre already had two novels under his belt in which
0:04:10 > 0:04:14he'd introduced his enigmatic little Buddha, George Smiley,
0:04:14 > 0:04:17but the shock of seeing, as he put it,
0:04:17 > 0:04:21"this symbol of ideology run mad" produced an anger which
0:04:21 > 0:04:26triggered a new book - The Spy Who Came In From The Cold -
0:04:26 > 0:04:29which would in effect redefine spy fiction.
0:04:31 > 0:04:35The Spy Who Came In From The Cold tells the story of Alec Leamas,
0:04:35 > 0:04:39head of British intelligence in West Berlin, who swaps sides
0:04:39 > 0:04:43in order to expose a double agent but, in the process, gets caught up
0:04:43 > 0:04:48in a deadly triple-bluff that is well beyond his control.
0:04:48 > 0:04:52This story with its "atmosphere of chilly hell",
0:04:52 > 0:04:57as the dust jacket says, asks deep questions such as,
0:04:57 > 0:04:58who is the real enemy?
0:04:58 > 0:05:04Is it the other superpower with its weapons trained against you?
0:05:04 > 0:05:07Or is it the cynical, well-dressed men at home,
0:05:07 > 0:05:12calmly prepared to send you to your death because, dear boy,
0:05:12 > 0:05:16the ends justify the rather grubby means?
0:05:18 > 0:05:21Berlin itself bookends the novel
0:05:21 > 0:05:24and the fog of suspicion that Le Carre found in this city
0:05:24 > 0:05:25cloaks every incident.
0:05:28 > 0:05:34Le Carre slowly heaps betrayal upon betrayal until we are
0:05:34 > 0:05:38overwhelmed by a sense of creeping paranoia -
0:05:38 > 0:05:40the very essence of spy fiction.
0:05:43 > 0:05:47But Le Carre wasn't just incorporating his own experiences,
0:05:47 > 0:05:51he was exploiting the founding rule on which the genre was based,
0:05:51 > 0:05:56a rule forged during an earlier era also marked by paranoia and
0:05:56 > 0:05:59a threat, again from the East.
0:06:08 > 0:06:11In the years leading up to the First World War,
0:06:11 > 0:06:17a stout, genial man named William Le Queux hit upon the staple ingredient
0:06:17 > 0:06:19for creating a popular spy novel.
0:06:21 > 0:06:26Le Queux had already established a huge following for his plucky agent
0:06:26 > 0:06:29Duckworth Drew of the Secret Service,
0:06:29 > 0:06:33who carried around drugged cigars to dispose of his enemies,
0:06:33 > 0:06:37but his new novel would cause a sensation.
0:06:37 > 0:06:41What Le Queux understood was that to create a classic espionage novel
0:06:41 > 0:06:45you first have to convey a compelling atmosphere of fear.
0:06:47 > 0:06:51And it was the ominous threat from Germany that informed
0:06:51 > 0:06:54Le Queux's The Invasion Of 1910,
0:06:54 > 0:06:56which describes in graphic detail
0:06:56 > 0:06:59a large-scale assault on England by Kaiser Bill.
0:07:02 > 0:07:05Germans land in England. Germans land in England.
0:07:06 > 0:07:07Read all about it.
0:07:07 > 0:07:12The novel appeared in serialised form from March 1906 in
0:07:12 > 0:07:16the Daily Mail, a paper that was no stranger to scare stories.
0:07:18 > 0:07:21The newspaper's proprietor, Lord Northcliffe,
0:07:21 > 0:07:24whose rampant Germanophobia
0:07:24 > 0:07:28easily convinced you of Le Queux's warnings, knew that out there,
0:07:28 > 0:07:33there was a vast expectant, anxious audience,
0:07:33 > 0:07:36and he knew exactly how to hit them with the coming horror.
0:07:38 > 0:07:42Read all about it in Mr Le Queux's new story.
0:07:42 > 0:07:45Thank you, squire. Germans land in England.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49Northcliffe kitted out his news vendors in Prussian greatcoats
0:07:49 > 0:07:54and spiked helmets, and every day's edition carried a detailed itinerary
0:07:54 > 0:07:58of the parts of the country at imminent risk of invasion.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03"London, the proud capital of the world, the home of the Englishman,
0:08:03 > 0:08:07"was at last ground beneath the iron heel of Germany."
0:08:09 > 0:08:11Northcliffe even altered Le Queux's route,
0:08:11 > 0:08:15so that the places about to be marched through by the German army
0:08:15 > 0:08:19happened to be the same towns with the highest Daily Mail readerships,
0:08:19 > 0:08:23thus increasing the paper's circulation by 80,000 copies a day.
0:08:28 > 0:08:31The government endeavoured to suppress the book's publication,
0:08:31 > 0:08:34with Le Queux denounced in Parliament
0:08:34 > 0:08:35as "a pernicious scaremonger".
0:08:37 > 0:08:38But such was the mania
0:08:38 > 0:08:40that The Invasion Of 1910
0:08:40 > 0:08:42went on to sell a million copies.
0:08:43 > 0:08:48Le Queux's scaremongering reached new heights with the publication of
0:08:48 > 0:08:52his 1909 novel, Spies Of The Kaiser, which claimed
0:08:52 > 0:08:57that England was being overrun by 5,000 German agents.
0:08:59 > 0:09:03Correspondence flooded in from alarmed readers,
0:09:03 > 0:09:05who claimed to have seen agents
0:09:05 > 0:09:07inspecting almost every aspect of English life,
0:09:07 > 0:09:11from gas and water supplies to measuring bridges,
0:09:11 > 0:09:14to even counting the number of cows in fields.
0:09:18 > 0:09:23Le Queux stirred the anxieties of the nation to such an extent
0:09:23 > 0:09:26that in March 1909, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith,
0:09:26 > 0:09:29responded by appointing a special
0:09:29 > 0:09:31Sub-committee of the Imperial Defence
0:09:31 > 0:09:36"to consider the nature and extent of the foreign espionage
0:09:36 > 0:09:40"that is at present taking place in this country."
0:09:49 > 0:09:53'I'm meeting a former head of the Security Service and bestselling
0:09:53 > 0:09:54'spy novelist herself,
0:09:54 > 0:09:57'who knows just how potent this spy mania was
0:09:57 > 0:10:00'and how it led to the formation of the very first
0:10:00 > 0:10:03'Secret Intelligence Service.'
0:10:03 > 0:10:05To what extent does Le Queux's scaremongering
0:10:05 > 0:10:09and those fantasies about unreal spies actually trigger the creation
0:10:09 > 0:10:10of something real,
0:10:10 > 0:10:13our own counter-espionage effort in this country?
0:10:13 > 0:10:18Oh, it led directly to it, because so much scaremongering
0:10:18 > 0:10:20had been going on. Many people in the country
0:10:20 > 0:10:23were getting really anxious about it, not surprisingly,
0:10:23 > 0:10:26and were writing in to the Daily Mail, the government etc,
0:10:26 > 0:10:29saying, you know, "I'm worried about this, what's going on?"
0:10:29 > 0:10:32We had no organised counter-espionage structures
0:10:32 > 0:10:35in place at all to deal with this.
0:10:35 > 0:10:37The Committee Of Imperial Defence,
0:10:37 > 0:10:41which was chaired by the Secretary Of State For War, got together
0:10:41 > 0:10:44and they eventually decided that they better form
0:10:44 > 0:10:48some kind of counter-espionage structure.
0:10:48 > 0:10:51So, two officers were told to go away
0:10:51 > 0:10:54and create the Secret Service Bureau.
0:10:55 > 0:11:00One was Commander Cumming - he had a gold-rimmed monocle -
0:11:00 > 0:11:04and they say that he had this wooden leg in place,
0:11:04 > 0:11:08and that when, you know, conducting meetings or something,
0:11:08 > 0:11:11he had a habit of stabbing his wooden leg with a paper knife
0:11:11 > 0:11:13in order to make a point
0:11:13 > 0:11:17and scare all the people that he was having the meeting with, obviously.
0:11:17 > 0:11:19- So that was Commander Cumming... - And he was C, he was the first C?
0:11:19 > 0:11:21He became C, and the other thing,
0:11:21 > 0:11:24apart from having the gold-rimmed monocle and the wooden leg,
0:11:24 > 0:11:26he wrote in green ink, only in green ink.
0:11:26 > 0:11:28And that custom still goes on today.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31Then there was Vernon Kell - Director K -
0:11:31 > 0:11:34who was the military officer.
0:11:34 > 0:11:37He was a very different cup of tea. Kell was quite a small man
0:11:37 > 0:11:41and he was asthmatic, and he was not a great sort of
0:11:41 > 0:11:45flamboyant personality at all. So, eventually, I mean, this was
0:11:45 > 0:11:47a very difficult situation for these two chaps
0:11:47 > 0:11:49because they had very few staff.
0:11:49 > 0:11:52I think they decided that, in order to do anything with this,
0:11:52 > 0:11:54they were going to have to divide the job in half.
0:11:54 > 0:11:59So out of that came MI6 - secret intelligence service, works abroad -
0:11:59 > 0:12:03and MI5 - basically in charge of defending us at home.
0:12:04 > 0:12:06For all his so-called "pernicious scaremongering",
0:12:06 > 0:12:11Le Queux's warnings turned out to be all too real.
0:12:16 > 0:12:20Le Queux was certainly not alone in writing spy novels, but his huge
0:12:20 > 0:12:25popularity and proficiency, churning our four or five books every year,
0:12:25 > 0:12:28showed there was a ready market for this new genre.
0:12:29 > 0:12:32And within these innovative novels
0:12:32 > 0:12:35an archetypal spy was taking shape.
0:12:43 > 0:12:49The British heroes of this new fiction were typically young, male,
0:12:49 > 0:12:52athletic and, above all, gentlemen, so it was important,
0:12:52 > 0:12:57given that spying was a dirty business, that they were amateurs,
0:12:57 > 0:13:02either brought into it by a sense of adventure or entangled by accident
0:13:02 > 0:13:05in this murky underworld.
0:13:07 > 0:13:11And the gentleman spy who encapsulated all of these qualities
0:13:11 > 0:13:15was Richard Hannay, the hero of John Buchan's shilling shocker,
0:13:15 > 0:13:17The 39 Steps.
0:13:19 > 0:13:22Hannay, a Scot who'd been living for some time in South Africa,
0:13:22 > 0:13:26arrives in London on the brink of the First World War.
0:13:26 > 0:13:31There he meets one Franklin P Scudder, a private investigator
0:13:31 > 0:13:33who has been tracking a German spy ring.
0:13:35 > 0:13:39But when Scudder is murdered in Hannay's rooms,
0:13:39 > 0:13:43pinned to the floor with a knife, Hannay is sickened
0:13:43 > 0:13:47by the unsporting behaviour of foreigners
0:13:47 > 0:13:50and he has to cover the corpse with a tablecloth.
0:13:51 > 0:13:54"I had seen men die violently before,
0:13:54 > 0:13:57"indeed I had killed a few myself in the Matabele War,
0:13:57 > 0:14:02"but this cold-blooded indoor business was different."
0:14:04 > 0:14:09The brisk, action-packed pace of Buchan's spy shocker, with Hannay's
0:14:09 > 0:14:13patriotic pursuit, captivated a huge British readership
0:14:13 > 0:14:17in the throes of The Great War, and it spawned several sequels.
0:14:20 > 0:14:26Early spy fiction maintained a clear distinction between "them" and "us".
0:14:26 > 0:14:28Spying was what other countries did -
0:14:28 > 0:14:32foreigners were quite good at dishonesty and subterfuge
0:14:32 > 0:14:34but, in the end, they would be defeated
0:14:34 > 0:14:37by good old-fashioned British pluck.
0:14:37 > 0:14:42# I've gone around the world in a plane... #
0:14:42 > 0:14:46One such plucky English gent was the writer Somerset Maugham,
0:14:46 > 0:14:50who, in 1915, was recruited by British military intelligence,
0:14:50 > 0:14:54given the codename Somerville, and dispatched to Geneva
0:14:54 > 0:14:58to relay messages to and from a network of agents
0:14:58 > 0:15:01behind German lines.
0:15:01 > 0:15:04After two years of adventures, holed up in the
0:15:04 > 0:15:09Grand Hotel D'Angleterre, itself a hotbed of international intrigue
0:15:09 > 0:15:12seething with agents and agitators, Maugham began
0:15:12 > 0:15:18to write his own spy stories, based on his alter ego, Ashenden.
0:15:20 > 0:15:24From now, exploiting your own experiences undercover,
0:15:24 > 0:15:28out in the field, became a staple for the British spy novelist.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39Somerset Maugham was the first in a long line of great writers,
0:15:39 > 0:15:43including Graham Greene, Ian Fleming and John le Carre,
0:15:43 > 0:15:46whose exploits as real spies were to lend spy fiction
0:15:46 > 0:15:47much of its credibility.
0:15:50 > 0:15:53To tell you the honest truth,
0:15:53 > 0:15:57fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work
0:15:57 > 0:16:01that now, looking back, I can hardly distinguish one from the other.
0:16:05 > 0:16:09Like Maugham himself, his spy, Ashenden, is a debonair playwright
0:16:09 > 0:16:13recruited by British military intelligence and,
0:16:13 > 0:16:15though he allows himself the odd flight of fantasy,
0:16:15 > 0:16:19his official existence is as ordinary and monotonous
0:16:19 > 0:16:20as a city clerk's.
0:16:20 > 0:16:23# You're the cream of my coffee
0:16:23 > 0:16:25# You're the salt in my stew
0:16:25 > 0:16:28# You will always be my necessity
0:16:28 > 0:16:31# I'd be lost without you. #
0:16:31 > 0:16:36This de-glamorising of the agent was something new in spy fiction.
0:16:36 > 0:16:38Maugham describes Ashenden as
0:16:38 > 0:16:41"a tiny rivet in a vast and complicated machine".
0:16:41 > 0:16:44So he makes him a bit banal, but he then deals with
0:16:44 > 0:16:49that by surrounding him with a cast of strange and vivid characters.
0:16:50 > 0:16:55There are the shady anarchists plotting revolution.
0:16:55 > 0:16:59The sullen and seductive former dancer, Madame Lazzari,
0:16:59 > 0:17:03forced to betray her Indian lover.
0:17:03 > 0:17:06And most startling of all,
0:17:06 > 0:17:11the sinister presence of a man known as "The Hairless Mexican".
0:17:15 > 0:17:19Ashenden was to prove an amusing and cynical antidote to
0:17:19 > 0:17:23the derring-do of Buchan and Le Queux.
0:17:23 > 0:17:27This was the first popular spy novel to be written by someone who had
0:17:27 > 0:17:30actually been there and done that.
0:17:30 > 0:17:34However, by merging fact and fiction, Maugham, as a former agent,
0:17:34 > 0:17:39was treading the limits of what was and was not permissible.
0:17:39 > 0:17:44Maugham danced elegantly enough around the facts to
0:17:44 > 0:17:47evade the MI6 censor, but even so
0:17:47 > 0:17:51the then Secretary of State for War, one Winston Churchill,
0:17:51 > 0:17:53who'd read the manuscript, insisted that
0:17:53 > 0:17:56Maugham removed almost half of the stories because he thought they
0:17:56 > 0:17:59breached the Official Secrets Act.
0:17:59 > 0:18:02Embargoed by the Foreign Office,
0:18:02 > 0:18:07it would take nearly ten years until Maugham's novel was published.
0:18:07 > 0:18:10But we shouldn't get too carried away with the
0:18:10 > 0:18:14idea that only ex-spies write good spy fiction.
0:18:14 > 0:18:18In the years following Ashenden, a ground-breaking exception to that
0:18:18 > 0:18:19convention would emerge.
0:18:26 > 0:18:30One new novelist, the former copywriter Eric Ambler,
0:18:30 > 0:18:34began to question the real human cost of espionage
0:18:34 > 0:18:37and its strange moral greyness.
0:18:37 > 0:18:40More radically still, he realised that, in a spy novel,
0:18:40 > 0:18:43the hero doesn't have to be a spy.
0:18:43 > 0:18:47And in fact, to portray the sinister forces of espionage, you might be
0:18:47 > 0:18:54better off by looking at its effect on Mr Normal, the ordinary man.
0:18:55 > 0:18:57Even sainted John Buchan I thought
0:18:57 > 0:19:02were out of touch,
0:19:02 > 0:19:04certainly with the world of the early '30s.
0:19:04 > 0:19:06They were out of touch with Europe,
0:19:06 > 0:19:11they were out of touch with the next war
0:19:11 > 0:19:13which we were all waiting...
0:19:16 > 0:19:18And I thought
0:19:18 > 0:19:24that there should be a thriller that was in closer touch with reality,
0:19:24 > 0:19:25and I set out to do it.
0:19:31 > 0:19:37Between 1935 and 1940, Ambler wrote six spy novels which made his name.
0:19:37 > 0:19:42In Journey Into Fear, later filmed by Orson Welles,
0:19:42 > 0:19:46the central character is an engineer who has stumbled upon secret plans
0:19:46 > 0:19:50and is being pursued by a sinister Romanian agent.
0:19:52 > 0:19:57"He sat down on the bunk and tried to pull himself together.
0:19:57 > 0:20:01"He told himself, 'There's no need to get worried.
0:20:01 > 0:20:05" 'There's a way out of this. You've got to think.'
0:20:05 > 0:20:09"Thanking his stars that he had not refused to take it,
0:20:09 > 0:20:12"he got the gun out and weighed it in his hand.
0:20:12 > 0:20:15"He had never handled a revolver in his life before."
0:20:17 > 0:20:21For Aly Monroe, author of a recent series of spy novels
0:20:21 > 0:20:25set during the same period, Eric Ambler's books still hold
0:20:25 > 0:20:27a special resonance.
0:20:28 > 0:20:31If we're talking about the development of the genre,
0:20:31 > 0:20:34Eric Ambler is the revolution. What's remarkable
0:20:34 > 0:20:38when you read him today is that his voice speaks to you -
0:20:38 > 0:20:41he speaks like a real person speaking to you.
0:20:41 > 0:20:47'All these stories that I write have really one essential theme and it's
0:20:47 > 0:20:52'loss of innocence, not of sexual innocence, but usually a political
0:20:52 > 0:20:59'innocence, and the person losing innocence is the reader.'
0:21:00 > 0:21:03We'd already seen a degree of realism creeping in
0:21:03 > 0:21:05with Somerset Maugham's Ashenden tales,
0:21:05 > 0:21:09but the realism that he was giving us was from
0:21:09 > 0:21:11a very privileged perspective.
0:21:11 > 0:21:14With Eric Ambler, all that changed.
0:21:14 > 0:21:19He gave us a much more grubby realism and they also introduced
0:21:19 > 0:21:21an element of moral dilemmas.
0:21:24 > 0:21:27The books that he wrote I always think of as the
0:21:27 > 0:21:29Chekhov of spy fiction,
0:21:29 > 0:21:32because he writes clearly,
0:21:32 > 0:21:35simply, in a detached manner,
0:21:35 > 0:21:37and that is what's refreshing about him.
0:21:39 > 0:21:44I've sometimes thought of the thriller as a form of allegory.
0:21:44 > 0:21:48It's telling a moral story in other terms.
0:21:50 > 0:21:56Ambler gave us the spy not as hero but as a victim,
0:21:56 > 0:21:59and he flipped other conventions, too.
0:21:59 > 0:22:02As a convinced anti-fascist, in Ambler's books
0:22:02 > 0:22:05it's the Russian agents who are sympathetic and
0:22:05 > 0:22:10the really bad guys are the shadowy agents of international capitalism.
0:22:12 > 0:22:17Eric Ambler's protagonists are not crack-shots, they're not heroes,
0:22:17 > 0:22:19they're not British imperialists.
0:22:19 > 0:22:22What they are is ordinary individuals
0:22:22 > 0:22:28caught up in the Europe of the '30s and they're trying to survive.
0:22:28 > 0:22:29They're not trying to be heroes.
0:22:29 > 0:22:32They're trying to avoid being casualties.
0:22:34 > 0:22:36Reading Ambler today,
0:22:36 > 0:22:40it's impossible to avoid an unsettling sense of familiarity.
0:22:40 > 0:22:45The wheel of history has turned and given us a Europe not so very
0:22:45 > 0:22:48different from Eric Ambler's.
0:22:48 > 0:22:53Full again of stateless individuals desperately seeking asylum
0:22:53 > 0:22:57and a pervasive sense that, in the end, nobody is really in charge.
0:22:59 > 0:23:04For many writers, Eric Ambler remains the spy novelist of choice.
0:23:06 > 0:23:08But one contemporary of his realised
0:23:08 > 0:23:12that in the austere, bleak post-war years,
0:23:12 > 0:23:14the reading public needed little reminder
0:23:14 > 0:23:17of the harsh realities of wartime espionage.
0:23:17 > 0:23:22Ian Fleming was determined to rewrite the rules.
0:23:22 > 0:23:24How long do these books take you to write?
0:23:24 > 0:23:27Six weeks to two months the actual writing,
0:23:27 > 0:23:29but I never correct as I go along,
0:23:29 > 0:23:31I try and get pace into the narrative by sitting straight down
0:23:31 > 0:23:33at the typewriter.
0:23:33 > 0:23:35You've got to have a basic plot,
0:23:35 > 0:23:38people have got to want to know what's going to happen by
0:23:38 > 0:23:41the end of it. I think you've got to have a certain amount of sex,
0:23:41 > 0:23:43and I think you've got to have violence.
0:23:43 > 0:23:45GUNSHOT
0:23:45 > 0:23:48But there was one golden rule Fleming didn't throw out
0:23:48 > 0:23:52and rather made his own, and with which he launched every mission.
0:24:02 > 0:24:06"The eyes of Miss Moneypenny, M's private secretary,
0:24:06 > 0:24:09"had that old look of excitement and secret knowledge
0:24:09 > 0:24:13"as she smiled up at him and pressed the switch on the intercom.
0:24:13 > 0:24:15" '007's here, sir.'
0:24:15 > 0:24:18" 'Send him in,' said the metallic voice,
0:24:18 > 0:24:22"and the red light of privacy went on above the door.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26"Bond sat down and looked across into the tranquil
0:24:26 > 0:24:30"lined sailor's face that he loved, honoured and obeyed."
0:24:31 > 0:24:34William Boyd, or B as I suppose I have to call you now,
0:24:34 > 0:24:38we find ourselves here in a typical briefing encounter at the
0:24:38 > 0:24:40beginning of a Bond novel.
0:24:40 > 0:24:43Tell me why the briefing is so important in so many Bond novels.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47Of course it's part of any spy's job that he's given a
0:24:47 > 0:24:49mission or given instructions,
0:24:49 > 0:24:51but it doesn't necessarily have to be sort of formal
0:24:51 > 0:24:54with two people across a desk, coming into the office, being told
0:24:54 > 0:24:58what to do, but it's absolutely intrinsic to the Bond myth anyway.
0:24:58 > 0:25:00Tell me about M, then.
0:25:00 > 0:25:03Well, I think this may be part of the answer to it,
0:25:03 > 0:25:07because I see a kind of paternal relationship there, even if it's
0:25:07 > 0:25:09only perceived from Bond's side,
0:25:09 > 0:25:13because M is always rather brusque with him and unsentimental,
0:25:13 > 0:25:15but Bond says, "I loved M."
0:25:15 > 0:25:17Now, who loves their boss?
0:25:17 > 0:25:20So it's a much more complex and deep relationship,
0:25:20 > 0:25:22therefore the briefing, maybe for Fleming,
0:25:22 > 0:25:26was absolutely central to the story he was going to tell.
0:25:26 > 0:25:28- The son being sent out into the world.- Yes.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31So we've talked about the briefing, what are the
0:25:31 > 0:25:33other crucial elements or rules of a good Bond novel?
0:25:33 > 0:25:37There's got to be at least two love affairs, and there has to be,
0:25:37 > 0:25:39of course, a particularly nasty villain.
0:25:40 > 0:25:42And there's got to be a lot of food and drink
0:25:42 > 0:25:45and attention to detail,
0:25:45 > 0:25:48like a specific cigarette, a specific type of vodka.
0:25:48 > 0:25:50There's pure escapism in the Bond novel.
0:25:50 > 0:25:54Imagine picking up Casino Royale in the 1950s -
0:25:54 > 0:25:59London still full of bombsites, grey austerity everywhere,
0:25:59 > 0:26:01and reading about people eating caviar
0:26:01 > 0:26:04and ordering a carafe of vodka,
0:26:04 > 0:26:06you know, unheard of, I would imagine, to...
0:26:06 > 0:26:09You've written your own Bond novel - Solo.
0:26:09 > 0:26:13To what extent were you asked to follow the idioms
0:26:13 > 0:26:15of Ian Fleming's writing?
0:26:15 > 0:26:18You're given a free hand to do what you want to do.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21I realised that he'd only been to Africa briefly
0:26:21 > 0:26:23at the end of Diamonds Are Forever.
0:26:23 > 0:26:25I was born and raised in Africa,
0:26:25 > 0:26:28and I was very affected by the Nigerian Civil War
0:26:28 > 0:26:31of the late 1960s, early '70s.
0:26:31 > 0:26:34And that fitted in to Bond's chronology perfectly.
0:26:34 > 0:26:39So I could then have a middle-aged Bond at the end of the '60s,
0:26:39 > 0:26:42in a nasty African civil war.
0:26:43 > 0:26:45Because Bond is Fleming's creation,
0:26:45 > 0:26:50even when he's alone in the African jungle and he stumbles across a
0:26:50 > 0:26:54pawpaw and rips it open and devours it, he's savouring it like
0:26:54 > 0:26:58a gourmet as Bond would do, and even when he hasn't got
0:26:58 > 0:27:00the ingredients for a perfect dry martini,
0:27:00 > 0:27:02he invents an African dry martini.
0:27:02 > 0:27:05And when he can't smoke, he craves a cigarette.
0:27:05 > 0:27:08He's that kind of a man, and I think to have a kind
0:27:08 > 0:27:12of clean-living vegan Bond is just not on.
0:27:14 > 0:27:20Bond's global appeal sold 30 million books during Fleming's lifetime,
0:27:20 > 0:27:24a number that doubled following his death in 1964,
0:27:24 > 0:27:28by which time the Bond phenomenon, with all its conventions,
0:27:28 > 0:27:31had leapt off the page and into the cinema.
0:27:33 > 0:27:37But Bond's arrival on the big screen was so explosive
0:27:37 > 0:27:41it came to overshadow, overwhelm the books themselves,
0:27:41 > 0:27:44and Bond came to be seen more as a cinematic hero
0:27:44 > 0:27:47than a literary one - he still is.
0:27:49 > 0:27:53In the novels and the films, James Bond promoted the idea
0:27:53 > 0:27:56that our secret service was the best in the world.
0:27:56 > 0:27:58Just how wrong could you be?
0:28:00 > 0:28:03By the early 1960s, the revelations that MI6
0:28:03 > 0:28:08had been riddled with double agents like Burgess and Maclean,
0:28:08 > 0:28:12George Blake and Kim Philby, shook Britain to its core.
0:28:12 > 0:28:15But it was a godsend for the British spy novelist.
0:28:25 > 0:28:30The double agent offered a complex new psychological mind-set
0:28:30 > 0:28:32for the espionage novel to explore, and no-one was to
0:28:32 > 0:28:36exploit this more than John le Carre.
0:28:36 > 0:28:38His central character, Alec Leamas,
0:28:38 > 0:28:41in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,
0:28:41 > 0:28:44is, just like the notorious George Blake,
0:28:44 > 0:28:48a spy master running agents in Berlin,
0:28:48 > 0:28:52many of whom are caught and incarcerated in communist prisons,
0:28:52 > 0:28:57of which the most notorious was Hohenschonhausen in East Berlin.
0:28:58 > 0:29:04Many of the more than 100 men and women betrayed by, for instance,
0:29:04 > 0:29:07George Blake, ended up right here.
0:29:09 > 0:29:12Which is as near as I have ever been to hell.
0:29:13 > 0:29:19Think, if you will, of the spurious glamour of the gentlemen spies -
0:29:19 > 0:29:23those perfect accents, perfectly cut suits -
0:29:23 > 0:29:30this is where it ends, in ghastly, tiny little concrete and steel cells
0:29:30 > 0:29:32with two inches of water on the floor,
0:29:32 > 0:29:36no natural light, no day, no night.
0:29:36 > 0:29:39Torture - physical and psychological.
0:29:42 > 0:29:47In Le Carre's story, when Leamas loses his last double agent,
0:29:47 > 0:29:50he agrees to infiltrate East German intelligence
0:29:50 > 0:29:53by posing as a potential defector.
0:29:54 > 0:29:58John le Carre slowly builds towards a tense interrogation scene
0:29:58 > 0:30:03which he uses to meditate on the complexity of living a lie.
0:30:05 > 0:30:09"In itself the practice of deception is not particularly exacting,
0:30:09 > 0:30:10"it's a matter of experience.
0:30:10 > 0:30:14"It is a facility most of us can acquire.
0:30:14 > 0:30:19"But while a confidence trickster, a play-actor or a gambler
0:30:19 > 0:30:23"can return from his performance to the ranks of his admirers,
0:30:23 > 0:30:27"the secret agent enjoys no such relief."
0:30:29 > 0:30:33Le Carre shows that the double agent must be something of a novelist.
0:30:33 > 0:30:38He creates a fiction and then must maintain it constantly.
0:30:38 > 0:30:43Leamas is able to keep up his practised deception completely,
0:30:43 > 0:30:48except for one moment when he briefly lets the mask slip.
0:30:48 > 0:30:51It seems trivial at the time, but as the novel progresses
0:30:51 > 0:30:56we discover that this momentary slip has tragic consequences.
0:30:59 > 0:31:03The Spy Who Came In From The Cold was a runaway success.
0:31:03 > 0:31:06Within a year it had reached its 20th impression.
0:31:07 > 0:31:10But how did the real spooks rate the novel?
0:31:10 > 0:31:13Philby himself didn't think very much of your novel,
0:31:13 > 0:31:16The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, did he?
0:31:16 > 0:31:17No, indeed, quite rightly.
0:31:17 > 0:31:20I haven't yet found a communist who did.
0:31:20 > 0:31:22But it's anathema to every communist I've ever met.
0:31:22 > 0:31:26I haven't succeeded in selling the book to any Iron Curtain country.
0:31:26 > 0:31:29The book has been poisonously reviewed over six pages in
0:31:29 > 0:31:31The Soviet Literary Gazette,
0:31:31 > 0:31:33although Russians aren't allowed to read it.
0:31:33 > 0:31:36And I'm not surprised that Philby has added his own little line.
0:31:39 > 0:31:44However, although spy novels were censored or even banned in the East,
0:31:44 > 0:31:49Le Carre's novel still managed to land on the desk of the Stasi -
0:31:49 > 0:31:52the East German Ministry for State Security.
0:31:54 > 0:31:59And for a long time it was the only book I read.
0:31:59 > 0:32:05And I'm not sure whether I gave an order to bring me this book
0:32:05 > 0:32:09or one of my spies brought it as a present.
0:32:10 > 0:32:13I was astonished because...
0:32:13 > 0:32:17And I would like to ask John le Carre now,
0:32:17 > 0:32:22had he at that time some information about the situation inside of our
0:32:22 > 0:32:26Ministry of State Security?
0:32:26 > 0:32:29The spooks were now not only keeping an eye on each other,
0:32:29 > 0:32:32but also on how they were being written about.
0:32:33 > 0:32:36And there's a sense that the spy novel was now at least
0:32:36 > 0:32:40as interesting as many genuinely stolen documents,
0:32:40 > 0:32:43that spy fiction had become an open window
0:32:43 > 0:32:46into the real world of espionage.
0:32:47 > 0:32:51If we had given the Stasi the firm impression of the Western spy as a
0:32:51 > 0:32:55polished gentleman, they must have been perplexed by a new novel which
0:32:55 > 0:32:58now landed on their desk that would overturn
0:32:58 > 0:33:01one of spy fiction's chief conventions.
0:33:10 > 0:33:14Showing up the old boys' network for the nest of arch dissemblers
0:33:14 > 0:33:18they were was a new writer called Len Deighton.
0:33:18 > 0:33:22He was to approach the spy novel from a very different perspective.
0:33:27 > 0:33:32For an untainted hero, you now had to look elsewhere entirely.
0:33:32 > 0:33:37Deighton's unnamed spy - he only becomes Harry Palmer in the films -
0:33:37 > 0:33:40was a different class altogether.
0:33:40 > 0:33:43He hails from Burnley, he's the son of a railway worker,
0:33:43 > 0:33:45and he hasn't much time for the upper classes
0:33:45 > 0:33:48with their weedy accent.
0:33:48 > 0:33:52"Think you can handle a tricky little special assignment?"
0:33:52 > 0:33:55asks his boss in The Ipcress File.
0:33:55 > 0:33:59"If it doesn't require a classical education," he replies,
0:33:59 > 0:34:02"I think I might grope my way around it."
0:34:04 > 0:34:07Insubordinate and without privilege,
0:34:07 > 0:34:10Palmer rails against the establishment in what is both
0:34:10 > 0:34:16an obvious reaction to the gentleman spy and the glamour of James Bond.
0:34:16 > 0:34:18Another one of my friends came up to me and they said,
0:34:18 > 0:34:23"Yes, you've been very lucky, Len, because you're a blunt instrument
0:34:23 > 0:34:27"that the critics have used to smash Ian Fleming over the head."
0:34:27 > 0:34:29And this is really, I think, true.
0:34:29 > 0:34:31There are a lot of people who didn't
0:34:31 > 0:34:34like the sort of success the film was having
0:34:34 > 0:34:40were over-generous to me when I came along with something
0:34:40 > 0:34:48which was a substantially different thing to the James Bond books.
0:34:50 > 0:34:53Len Deighton's novels transferred very well to the big screen,
0:34:53 > 0:34:58with his hero immortalised by Michael Caine as Harry Palmer -
0:34:58 > 0:34:59a bespectacled offbeat spy
0:34:59 > 0:35:02with the same weary cynicism that permeates the books.
0:35:06 > 0:35:11Harry Palmer's third appearance is in the novel Funeral In Berlin,
0:35:11 > 0:35:15which centres around the supposed defection of a senior Soviet,
0:35:15 > 0:35:20Colonel Stok, and the novel makes much use of chess as the overarching
0:35:20 > 0:35:23metaphor for the complicated business of spying,
0:35:23 > 0:35:27with each side having to think at least three moves ahead.
0:35:31 > 0:35:34- Do you play chess?- Yes.
0:35:34 > 0:35:37But I prefer a game with a better chance of cheating.
0:35:37 > 0:35:39"Stok picked up a knight.
0:35:39 > 0:35:42" 'But the pattern of chess is the pattern of your capitalist world.
0:35:42 > 0:35:47" 'The world of bishops and castles and kings and knights.'
0:35:47 > 0:35:49" 'Don't look at me,' I said. 'I'm just a pawn.
0:35:49 > 0:35:51" 'I'm here in the front rank.'
0:35:51 > 0:35:55"Stok grinned and looked down at the board."
0:35:57 > 0:36:03Surrounding the main players in his novels, Deighton uses a myriad of
0:36:03 > 0:36:07detail to revel in the mechanics and the jargon of espionage,
0:36:07 > 0:36:10something known as tradecraft.
0:36:23 > 0:36:27Tradecraft is fantastic for writers
0:36:27 > 0:36:29because it gets you into the nitty-gritty
0:36:29 > 0:36:33day-to-day business of spying, and it propels the plot along.
0:36:33 > 0:36:36It can give you a moment of action
0:36:36 > 0:36:41or the latest little jigsaw piece in the wider structure of the plot.
0:36:43 > 0:36:48But the coup for any spy novelist is to reveal a new technique
0:36:48 > 0:36:50that others haven't picked up on,
0:36:50 > 0:36:54and one writer and former MI6 operative pulled it off superbly.
0:36:57 > 0:37:02Freddie, we have here the declassified tradecraft manual
0:37:02 > 0:37:04of the Metropolitan Police,
0:37:04 > 0:37:07and it's actually very, very funny because most of it is black,
0:37:07 > 0:37:09but on one page here it does say,
0:37:09 > 0:37:13"The Frederick Forsyth novel Day Of The Jackal explained how to acquire
0:37:13 > 0:37:16"documents in the name of a dead person.
0:37:16 > 0:37:18- LAUGHING:- Well, I don't know why they black it out,
0:37:18 > 0:37:20it's all in the book.
0:37:20 > 0:37:23You just simply had to go to Somerset House in those days
0:37:23 > 0:37:26and find the death certificate of a child who never applied
0:37:26 > 0:37:29for a passport so that there was no duplication,
0:37:29 > 0:37:32then go to the birth certificate section, ask for it.
0:37:32 > 0:37:35Morning. Birth certificate, please.
0:37:35 > 0:37:38Paul Oliver Duggan, born in the parish of Sambourne Fishley,
0:37:38 > 0:37:393rd April 1929.
0:37:39 > 0:37:42With a birth certificate, you fill out the form,
0:37:42 > 0:37:43put in a couple of pictures,
0:37:43 > 0:37:49a forged reference from some pastor up in North Wales or somewhere.
0:37:49 > 0:37:50Bung it into the passport office
0:37:50 > 0:37:53and back eventually would come a brand-new passport.
0:37:53 > 0:37:56It was false in the sense that it wasn't the right name,
0:37:56 > 0:37:59but it was your picture staring out the page.
0:38:01 > 0:38:05So is tradecraft an important dramatic tool for the novel?
0:38:05 > 0:38:08Yes, it is, because it happens to be also true.
0:38:08 > 0:38:13People are curious about the hidden world because they don't live in it
0:38:13 > 0:38:18and to lift the curtain now and again intrigues them, so...
0:38:18 > 0:38:21The spy would use a Minox camera to photograph secret documents
0:38:21 > 0:38:23and then he'd have a roll of film
0:38:23 > 0:38:26that somehow had to be got from there to London.
0:38:26 > 0:38:30He wasn't going to endanger himself by meeting a British agent,
0:38:30 > 0:38:34it was agreed he'd put it in a hole in a tree and someone else,
0:38:34 > 0:38:38hours later, would retrieve it from that hole in the tree.
0:38:38 > 0:38:42If you're sending an agent into a rather dangerous place abroad,
0:38:42 > 0:38:45then clearly he has to have every protection possible,
0:38:45 > 0:38:48and the first of is a damn good cover story.
0:38:48 > 0:38:50For example, secret police who arrest him.
0:38:50 > 0:38:52"What are you doing here?" "I'm attending the trade fair."
0:38:52 > 0:38:56"What are you promoting?" "My company. We sell paperclips."
0:38:56 > 0:38:58"Where are you staying?"
0:38:58 > 0:39:01"Well, I'm staying in the hotel I was allocated by your government."
0:39:01 > 0:39:03And it's all provably true.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06With a bit of luck, he'll get away with it.
0:39:06 > 0:39:11Later on, you were back in East Germany doing some work
0:39:11 > 0:39:12for our secret service.
0:39:12 > 0:39:14What did the East German Stasi do to keep an eye on you?
0:39:14 > 0:39:17Were you aware of being followed and so forth?
0:39:17 > 0:39:18Oh, yes, everything was bugged.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21The flat was bugged, the bedroom was bugged, the office was bugged.
0:39:21 > 0:39:24They were about the size of your thumb and they could be in the
0:39:24 > 0:39:27lighting or in the telephone. I discovered that my clunky
0:39:27 > 0:39:33old East German television set had got five valves instead of four.
0:39:33 > 0:39:36And presumably, during the Cold War in particular, it's their tradecraft
0:39:36 > 0:39:39against our tradecraft, and a constant sort of war
0:39:39 > 0:39:41to be slightly trickier than the other side.
0:39:41 > 0:39:45Yes, exactly. And when it goes bad, agents are caught.
0:39:45 > 0:39:48They may also be caught by betrayal, that's the
0:39:48 > 0:39:52big nightmare, that despite all your skill and all your luck and
0:39:52 > 0:39:55everything else, some bastard has betrayed you.
0:39:55 > 0:40:01It's curious how the spy novel always comes back to betrayal,
0:40:01 > 0:40:02and it was this theme that obsessed
0:40:02 > 0:40:05one of the 20th century's greatest novelists.
0:40:06 > 0:40:10Graham Greene would use the spy novel to explore just what it takes
0:40:10 > 0:40:14for someone to betray their country before their friends.
0:40:24 > 0:40:27In the early 1960s, Greene was working on a novel
0:40:27 > 0:40:30he later described as the hardest he'd ever tried to write.
0:40:30 > 0:40:32It's a rather bleak spy story focusing
0:40:32 > 0:40:35on the inner agonies of a double agent.
0:40:35 > 0:40:39But as soon as Kim Philby was exposed as a traitor,
0:40:39 > 0:40:41Greene shelved the book and stopped writing.
0:40:41 > 0:40:44He was worried the public would see it less as a novel
0:40:44 > 0:40:47and more as an account of his now notorious friend.
0:40:47 > 0:40:52Greene had worked under Philby at MI6 during the 1940s,
0:40:52 > 0:40:57and the latter's defection was to prey heavily on Greene's mind.
0:41:00 > 0:41:02I'm a bit surprised in a way, you know,
0:41:02 > 0:41:05that you should be pleased that Philby's used some of your ideas to
0:41:05 > 0:41:07justify his own behaviour.
0:41:09 > 0:41:10Why?
0:41:10 > 0:41:14It seems to me that he was behaving well,
0:41:14 > 0:41:17from his point of view.
0:41:17 > 0:41:20He was running great risks for a cause he believed in.
0:41:20 > 0:41:21But you don't think, do you,
0:41:21 > 0:41:25that the end can ever justify the most wicked means?
0:41:25 > 0:41:29No, I don't think it can at all. But I can sympathise all the same.
0:41:31 > 0:41:36It wasn't until 1978, some 15 years after Philby's defection,
0:41:36 > 0:41:41that Greene finally dusted off his manuscript and decided to tackle
0:41:41 > 0:41:44this question of a spy's loyalty.
0:41:44 > 0:41:48And I'm very pleased he did because, for me, this book, The Human Factor,
0:41:48 > 0:41:51is the spy novel at its very finest.
0:41:52 > 0:41:56Greene wasn't really interested in the business of spying,
0:41:56 > 0:41:58the assignation, the tradecraft, all of that,
0:41:58 > 0:42:01but in the human effect of betrayal,
0:42:01 > 0:42:03"the human factor", as he called it.
0:42:03 > 0:42:09His antihero, Maurice Castle, is slowly exposed as a double agent,
0:42:09 > 0:42:12but there's no great sense of outrage. In a way, it doesn't matter
0:42:12 > 0:42:14because Greene is trying to make us sympathise,
0:42:14 > 0:42:16as he did with Philby,
0:42:16 > 0:42:19with his character's sense of conviction and his loyalty to
0:42:19 > 0:42:23something, an idea that's even bigger than Britain.
0:42:23 > 0:42:28Castle's love for his wife and his adopted child is much deeper
0:42:28 > 0:42:29than any love for his country.
0:42:29 > 0:42:33He might be a traitor, but Greene brilliantly uses the spy novel
0:42:33 > 0:42:35not to focus on the political
0:42:35 > 0:42:36but on the personal.
0:42:36 > 0:42:40"Who amongst us," he later asked, "has not betrayed
0:42:40 > 0:42:44"something or someone more important than our country?"
0:42:47 > 0:42:52In Graham Greene's hands, espionage became an existential nightmare.
0:42:52 > 0:42:56And this was something John le Carre would pick up on
0:42:56 > 0:43:01in reimagining the showdown which traditionally ends a spy novel.
0:43:11 > 0:43:15For the spy novel to work, we need the paranoia.
0:43:15 > 0:43:20We love that dark miasma of suspicion and betrayal
0:43:20 > 0:43:24hanging in the air. But by the end, it can't simply be
0:43:24 > 0:43:28one system against another or two ideologies clashing,
0:43:28 > 0:43:30it has to come down to individuals -
0:43:30 > 0:43:33the spy and his nemesis.
0:43:33 > 0:43:38Not two systems, but two lonely human beings face to face.
0:43:38 > 0:43:41And it's this personal confrontation
0:43:41 > 0:43:44between George Smiley and his counterpart,
0:43:44 > 0:43:48the notorious spy master Karla, on a Berlin Bridge
0:43:48 > 0:43:53that provides the compelling finale to Le Carre's Karla trilogy.
0:43:56 > 0:44:00In bringing Karla over to the West, persuading him to defect,
0:44:00 > 0:44:02Smiley has finally won,
0:44:02 > 0:44:05but he's only able to do that by blackmailing him.
0:44:05 > 0:44:09He finds Karla's hidden weakness, his Achilles heel,
0:44:09 > 0:44:12which is the man's love for his daughter.
0:44:12 > 0:44:16Karla has been siphoning off funds to pay for his daughter's medical
0:44:16 > 0:44:20treatment in Switzerland, and Smiley uses this against him,
0:44:20 > 0:44:24uses this piece of attractive human frailty to destroy him.
0:44:27 > 0:44:31"He looked across into the darkness again, and an unholy vertigo seized
0:44:31 > 0:44:35"him as the very evil he had fought against seemed to reach out
0:44:35 > 0:44:37"and possess him and claim him.
0:44:41 > 0:44:45"On Karla has descended the curse of Smiley's compassion.
0:44:45 > 0:44:49"On Smiley, the curse of Karla's fanaticism. 'I have destroyed him
0:44:49 > 0:44:53" 'with the weapons I abhorred, and they are his.
0:44:53 > 0:44:56" 'We have crossed each other's frontiers.
0:44:56 > 0:44:58" 'We are the no men of this no-man's-land.' "
0:45:00 > 0:45:05Smiley and Karla's intimate and personal war brings the two of
0:45:05 > 0:45:09them very close together. They become much more
0:45:09 > 0:45:13like each other than either of them would have cared to admit,
0:45:13 > 0:45:14and that is because they have
0:45:14 > 0:45:17betrayed their own innermost principles.
0:45:17 > 0:45:21They have undermined the people they both wanted to be.
0:45:21 > 0:45:23And as a result, they are both, in a sense,
0:45:23 > 0:45:26cast out from the rest of humanity.
0:45:28 > 0:45:33And Le Carre's bigger point seems to be that this is how we all behave -
0:45:33 > 0:45:36we all make compromises, we all have failures and petty betrayals
0:45:36 > 0:45:39and, as a result, none of us, frankly,
0:45:39 > 0:45:42are the people we ought to be.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46George, you won.
0:45:50 > 0:45:51Did I?
0:45:52 > 0:45:53Yes.
0:45:55 > 0:45:56Yes, I suppose I did.
0:45:58 > 0:46:04To this day, John le Carre's Smiley novels epitomise Cold War espionage,
0:46:04 > 0:46:09but as the East-West conflicts receded and new threats began
0:46:09 > 0:46:12to emerge much closer to home,
0:46:12 > 0:46:16the spy novel would be forced to revise the rule book yet again.
0:46:29 > 0:46:33One of the core rules of espionage fiction is that the writers must
0:46:33 > 0:46:37change and adapt their characters and their plots
0:46:37 > 0:46:40to the fast-changing world around them.
0:46:40 > 0:46:45Spy novels, more than any other genre, must reflect and absorb
0:46:45 > 0:46:49the big political changes, the economic changes
0:46:49 > 0:46:53and the changes in national identity, however painful they are.
0:46:53 > 0:46:58Late in the Cold War, the secret state widened its remit to tackle
0:46:58 > 0:47:03terrorist organisations, and nowhere felt more volatile
0:47:03 > 0:47:05than the streets of Northern Ireland.
0:47:10 > 0:47:15This was a war on our own doorsteps of unimaginable ferocity.
0:47:17 > 0:47:22The enemies spoke the same language, they walked the same streets,
0:47:22 > 0:47:26they often lived just a few doors apart, and that produced violence
0:47:26 > 0:47:29whose intimacy was shattering.
0:47:29 > 0:47:32The journalist-turned-novelist Gerald Seymour,
0:47:32 > 0:47:36who covered the Troubles for more than five years, chose this war zone
0:47:36 > 0:47:38for his novel Harry's Game.
0:47:42 > 0:47:45In his story, the British Army Captain Harry Brown
0:47:45 > 0:47:49is sent into Belfast undercover to track down an IRA assassin,
0:47:49 > 0:47:53but he soon comes to realise just how expendable he is.
0:47:56 > 0:48:02Seymour explained how human lives were distorted or destroyed forever
0:48:02 > 0:48:05by the machinations of the secret state.
0:48:05 > 0:48:10I can't think of any novel that lays bare the existential awfulness of
0:48:10 > 0:48:13the Troubles like Harry's Game.
0:48:14 > 0:48:17" 'There had to be something odd about you, obvious. No family.
0:48:17 > 0:48:20" 'But you come right back into the centre of Belfast,
0:48:20 > 0:48:23" 'but you've no friends, no-one who knows you.
0:48:23 > 0:48:25" 'The voice worried me.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28" 'It's good now, very polished, you're quite Belfast,
0:48:28 > 0:48:30" 'but you didn't used to be.
0:48:30 > 0:48:32" 'So I don't reckon your chances, Harry.
0:48:32 > 0:48:35" 'Not when Provos get a hold of you. Not unless you run.
0:48:35 > 0:48:38" 'They don't take well to spies here, Harry.' "
0:48:40 > 0:48:46It was a brutally real place for an infiltrator,
0:48:46 > 0:48:50someone at that time early in the Troubles,
0:48:50 > 0:48:53trying to get inside the world of the Provos,
0:48:53 > 0:48:58a very frightening place to be and beyond help, beyond reach,
0:48:58 > 0:49:02a place where no mercy would be shown
0:49:02 > 0:49:06and no quarter would be asked for and certainly would not be given.
0:49:08 > 0:49:11When I started out, I wasn't thinking,
0:49:11 > 0:49:15"I want to join the big club that are doing Cold War spy stories."
0:49:16 > 0:49:20The spy novel had become rather cliched.
0:49:20 > 0:49:25I wanted to write about the place that I knew best, the place that
0:49:25 > 0:49:28I thought was most under-explained.
0:49:28 > 0:49:31I thought the stories that emanated from the place
0:49:31 > 0:49:33and that I came across
0:49:33 > 0:49:35pretty much every day of walking the streets there -
0:49:35 > 0:49:39the stories of courage and betrayal -
0:49:39 > 0:49:46and the astounding pressures that were being put on ordinary people -
0:49:46 > 0:49:49people driven into a situation from
0:49:49 > 0:49:52which they basically couldn't escape.
0:49:52 > 0:49:54THEY CHANT
0:49:59 > 0:50:05There was an extraordinary compulsion in that idea of the kid
0:50:05 > 0:50:10from the housing estates of Belfast, Derry,
0:50:10 > 0:50:17and the symbol of the Kalashnikov rifle, and what drives on the...
0:50:17 > 0:50:20HE CLEARS THROAT
0:50:20 > 0:50:23..the urban fighter, what sort of people they were,
0:50:23 > 0:50:25I found that so interesting.
0:50:25 > 0:50:29So much more interesting, I repeat, than Checkpoint Charlie.
0:50:29 > 0:50:32THEY CHANT
0:50:33 > 0:50:36The escalation of terrorist attacks and their shift to the British
0:50:36 > 0:50:42mainland since the 1970s, and particularly since 9/11,
0:50:42 > 0:50:44has forced the security services
0:50:44 > 0:50:48to develop highly sophisticated new forms of spying.
0:50:53 > 0:50:56After Edward Snowden, we all know that we live
0:50:56 > 0:51:00in an age of mass electronic surveillance.
0:51:00 > 0:51:04Satellites can cover virtually every inch of the planet,
0:51:04 > 0:51:06drones can go anywhere,
0:51:06 > 0:51:10and the smartphones most of us carry know more about us
0:51:10 > 0:51:12than our closest friends or our family.
0:51:15 > 0:51:19All of this internet data is harvested.
0:51:19 > 0:51:22It's sifted by an army of intelligence officers
0:51:22 > 0:51:25hidden behind walls of computer screens.
0:51:25 > 0:51:28From there, they can access remotely
0:51:28 > 0:51:30whoever happens to be the enemy that week
0:51:30 > 0:51:32and home in on what they're up to,
0:51:32 > 0:51:35or even destroy them with a drone strike.
0:51:36 > 0:51:38So here's the question.
0:51:38 > 0:51:42In the 21st century, are brilliantly clever
0:51:42 > 0:51:47eavesdropping machines making merely human spies history?
0:51:53 > 0:51:56And if so, what would that mean for the espionage novel?
0:51:56 > 0:52:01Because they absolutely depend upon real live three-dimensional blobby
0:52:01 > 0:52:04human beings with their flaws,
0:52:04 > 0:52:07their drinking habits and their sexuality
0:52:07 > 0:52:10and their strange faces to drag us through those stories.
0:52:10 > 0:52:12No spies, no spy fiction.
0:52:20 > 0:52:23But to keep its relevance and its popularity,
0:52:23 > 0:52:28spy fiction needs to maintain its human factor.
0:52:28 > 0:52:31I'm going to meet Charles Cumming,
0:52:31 > 0:52:33one of a new generation of spy novelists,
0:52:33 > 0:52:37who are still finding human stories in amongst the data.
0:52:37 > 0:52:42Charles, I guess in real life we wouldn't be meeting in 2016
0:52:42 > 0:52:44on a bench if we were spooks.
0:52:44 > 0:52:49I don't think anyone's met on a park bench since about 1935.
0:52:49 > 0:52:51It's very bad tradecraft.
0:52:51 > 0:52:53So, in the new world
0:52:53 > 0:52:56of metadata and the new forms of intelligence gathering,
0:52:56 > 0:53:00how do you find the human stories that make spy novels work?
0:53:00 > 0:53:03They're still out there. Nothing really has changed.
0:53:03 > 0:53:06Fundamentally, spying is about relationships between two people,
0:53:06 > 0:53:09finding out their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities, exploiting them.
0:53:09 > 0:53:12So, yes, we're all carrying mobile phones
0:53:12 > 0:53:15and there's Google and retinal scanners at airports, but the human
0:53:15 > 0:53:18business, which is what novelists are interested in, has not changed.
0:53:18 > 0:53:22But also the post-9/11 environment has given you a whole element of
0:53:22 > 0:53:26counter-terrorism and jihadism which is very interesting to explore,
0:53:26 > 0:53:29to get into. The difference is that the villain of the piece now
0:53:29 > 0:53:33is a less sophisticated, less intriguing figure ie -
0:53:33 > 0:53:36the brainwashed jihadi who wants to blow himself up on the bus.
0:53:36 > 0:53:39Whereas in the old days, the kind of Smiley-Karla dynamic
0:53:39 > 0:53:41was more interesting to explore because they were
0:53:41 > 0:53:43sort of two sides of the same coin.
0:53:43 > 0:53:45In the old days, we were quite
0:53:45 > 0:53:49interested in how sophisticated communists saw the world and saw us,
0:53:49 > 0:53:51and in a sense we're less interested in how ISIS sees us,
0:53:51 > 0:53:54because that's more obvious. We know what they think about us -
0:53:54 > 0:53:56they want to destroy us and so forth.
0:53:56 > 0:53:59Yes, I mean, the ideological underpinnings of jihadism
0:53:59 > 0:54:02is to re-establish a caliphate in Marbella or something,
0:54:02 > 0:54:06it's nuts, whereas the conflict between capitalism and communism in
0:54:06 > 0:54:09the '30s was very relevant to millions of people in Western Europe
0:54:09 > 0:54:12and the United States, we had McCarthyism and so forth.
0:54:12 > 0:54:13So you could say that spying
0:54:13 > 0:54:15is probably not as much fun as it used to be.
0:54:15 > 0:54:19- Oh, dear.- You know, the existential threat to us is horrific.
0:54:23 > 0:54:27Charles Cumming isn't alone in having to face these new threats
0:54:27 > 0:54:29in the pages of spy fiction.
0:54:29 > 0:54:33Other writers and spies of old have also had to address
0:54:33 > 0:54:35the shifting world of the spook.
0:54:35 > 0:54:39A new climate of fear needs new characters.
0:54:39 > 0:54:44So who is the new Alec Leamas or the new George Smiley?
0:54:44 > 0:54:47With Mike Martin in your Afghan novels
0:54:47 > 0:54:51you have a British soldier who has a rather dark skin,
0:54:51 > 0:54:53is able to speak Pashto.
0:54:53 > 0:54:56I'm just wondering, in the new world of Islamist terrorism
0:54:56 > 0:55:00and so forth, it must look and sound different from Smiley and his lot.
0:55:00 > 0:55:01Yes, exactly.
0:55:01 > 0:55:05Martin was unusual because he had an Indian grandmother, but he'd been
0:55:05 > 0:55:09born and raised the son of an oil executive in Iraq, so he could pass
0:55:09 > 0:55:13for an Arab among Arabs. That's very rare. That is seriously rare.
0:55:13 > 0:55:18Very, very hard to penetrate a society you weren't born into,
0:55:18 > 0:55:20because there are too many checks to be made,
0:55:20 > 0:55:22particularly in an Arabic society,
0:55:22 > 0:55:27so the man on the ground is still very valuable.
0:55:27 > 0:55:29It's always been our speciality.
0:55:29 > 0:55:31And it's not just in other cultures
0:55:31 > 0:55:34that today's writers are finding these new characters.
0:55:34 > 0:55:37Some are differently shaped
0:55:37 > 0:55:39and at the very heart of British intelligence.
0:55:39 > 0:55:46Liz Carlyle, who is my female character, is a product of now,
0:55:46 > 0:55:51you know, she's a modern MI5 officer, and she joined MI5.
0:55:51 > 0:55:54Unlike my experience of being tapped on the shoulder in India,
0:55:54 > 0:55:57she joined through a website and an advertisement,
0:55:57 > 0:56:01and joined to a service where men and women are equal,
0:56:01 > 0:56:04there is no career separation
0:56:04 > 0:56:06and they're doing all the same work as each other.
0:56:06 > 0:56:10If you're a novelist, what you do is you look at what you read in the
0:56:10 > 0:56:14newspaper and you imagine what could be going on to deal with it,
0:56:14 > 0:56:16you know, what's the story behind the story?
0:56:16 > 0:56:18And that's the way I do it.
0:56:18 > 0:56:21I keep a really sharp eye on what's changing in the world,
0:56:21 > 0:56:24where the threats to our national security come from,
0:56:24 > 0:56:25and then I imagine how the people
0:56:25 > 0:56:28who are currently working in the intelligence services deal with it.
0:56:34 > 0:56:38Spy novels have now been around for more than 100 years,
0:56:38 > 0:56:41and of course the things we're encouraged to feel scared about now,
0:56:41 > 0:56:45from Islamist terrorism, through drones, dirty bombs,
0:56:45 > 0:56:46mass surveillance,
0:56:46 > 0:56:51are a million miles away from the activities of Kaiser Bill's agents.
0:56:51 > 0:56:54But the fact that it's today's demons that animate
0:56:54 > 0:56:55the pages of the books rather than
0:56:55 > 0:56:59the state-sponsored violence of the early years of the genre,
0:56:59 > 0:57:01it's one of the reasons that spy fiction -
0:57:01 > 0:57:06that dark form of entertainment - remains so jumpingly alive today.
0:57:07 > 0:57:10And yet, for all their popularity,
0:57:10 > 0:57:13these books are still regarded as more worthy of the beach
0:57:13 > 0:57:15than the library.
0:57:15 > 0:57:19Let us talk now about snobbery.
0:57:19 > 0:57:20Traditionally, genre novels
0:57:20 > 0:57:23have been the poor cousins of literary novels -
0:57:23 > 0:57:28they've been the dim, drooling, slightly embarrassing relatives
0:57:28 > 0:57:31pushed to the back of the bookshop or alternative library shelves
0:57:31 > 0:57:34away from the proper books.
0:57:34 > 0:57:37I hope, if this series has taught you nothing else,
0:57:37 > 0:57:40it is that this is ludicrous and offensive.
0:57:42 > 0:57:46At their best, these books are rich and deep.
0:57:46 > 0:57:51They help us imagine more vividly, think more clearly,
0:57:51 > 0:57:54feel more deeply.
0:57:54 > 0:57:57They tell us what it is to be alive today,
0:57:57 > 0:57:59what it is to be that extraordinary thing -
0:57:59 > 0:58:01the reading biped, the human being.
0:58:01 > 0:58:03And that's what I call good writing.
0:58:08 > 0:58:11So what do you think makes the perfect spy?
0:58:11 > 0:58:13Try creating your own secret agent
0:58:13 > 0:58:16or even try your hand at writing fiction.
0:58:16 > 0:58:19Just go to the BBC website on the screen
0:58:19 > 0:58:21and follow the links to the Open University.