:00:00. > :00:00.Now it is time to Meet The Author with necktie.
:00:00. > :00:28.`` Nick hi. Charles Cumming, you called this
:00:29. > :00:32.book a cold war, which sounds like a deliberate homage to the classic spy
:00:33. > :00:40.thrillers of the Cold War era. Is that right? That is partly,
:00:41. > :00:42.largely, right. It is prissy impressive `` pretty impressive
:00:43. > :00:51.company, people like John Le Carre. Is that inhibiting exhilarating? Is
:00:52. > :00:55.flattering but a bit of albatross. As you say, they are giants of the
:00:56. > :01:02.genre. John Le Carre particularly is a huge figure not just in spy
:01:03. > :01:06.fiction, but culturally, if he goes for a walk in Cornwall, it makes the
:01:07. > :01:13.front of The Sunday Times. If you write in historical novel, you do
:01:14. > :01:19.not get called the next Hilary Mantell. There is something with spy
:01:20. > :01:27.novels that we all get compared to, compared with John Le Carre or Len
:01:28. > :01:34.Deayton. They were writing at a time when there were only two size. This
:01:35. > :01:38.is set largely in the Middle East. There is a lot about Syria. Is it
:01:39. > :01:45.more difficult to write a convincing spy thriller in an environment like
:01:46. > :01:51.that? You have lost that very obvious black and white, ideological
:01:52. > :01:57.communism versus capitalism. Nowadays it is harder to write
:01:58. > :02:03.villains because the sort of existential threat these days is of
:02:04. > :02:09.a maniac, brainwashed suicide bomber blowing us all up. In the old days
:02:10. > :02:13.it was nuclear annihilation. To try and get into the personality or the
:02:14. > :02:18.character of a maniac like that is not as interesting as exploring some
:02:19. > :02:22.of the lives and works in Moscow. You seem to get around that by
:02:23. > :02:28.acknowledging that the traitor in this book is not really ideological
:02:29. > :02:32.elite driven, rather like Kim Philby he is a sociopath. He is driven by
:02:33. > :02:39.his own arrogance and overconfidence. I don't think there
:02:40. > :02:46.was an ideological underpinning to what Kim Philby did. I am convinced
:02:47. > :02:52.he did it for reasons of vanity and joining ever better clubs, if you
:02:53. > :02:55.like. It was a game to him. He was not somebody who had walked with
:02:56. > :03:05.other commonest score was sympathetic to the working class.
:03:06. > :03:12.They reckon... There is an intellectual game being played
:03:13. > :03:18.there. There is vanity at work. He is doing what he's doing purely for
:03:19. > :03:23.the satisfaction of his own conceit. We worked out long before the end
:03:24. > :03:29.who is. That is the difference between a detective novel and a
:03:30. > :03:32.thriller. The thriller is not so much about identifying the villain
:03:33. > :03:41.as the process by which they are identified. That was a Tinker Tailor
:03:42. > :03:53.Soldier Spy thing. I was very aware of the cultural weight of that book,
:03:54. > :03:58.that masterpiece. And I have the same model at the beginning of the
:03:59. > :04:03.cold war, people who could be the traitor. But I did not want it to be
:04:04. > :04:08.a similar narrative structure. So yes, you identify my old may be
:04:09. > :04:14.halfway through the story and it becomes a story not much about
:04:15. > :04:20.exposing who or she is, but the Cure are making sure they do not elude
:04:21. > :04:27.justice. `` the hero. This is set in Istanbul. You have obviously gone to
:04:28. > :04:33.some lengths to make it convincing. Ukraine features in this book. You
:04:34. > :04:37.have been overtaken by events. Ukraine comes across as a sleepy
:04:38. > :04:42.client state of Russia, which it is emphatically not. Is that a problem?
:04:43. > :04:47.I have had a strange crystal ball thing throughout my career. When I
:04:48. > :04:57.was living in Madrid, the bombings happened. They were initially blamed
:04:58. > :05:05.on the Basque separatists, Etta. The book I was riding at the time was
:05:06. > :05:12.about them. I wrote the book about separatists in China rioting. The
:05:13. > :05:17.week the book was published they started rioting. There is a strange
:05:18. > :05:24.thing that has followed the around. You have been wrong`footed this
:05:25. > :05:29.time! Yes! You have two write a book a year under contract. How
:05:30. > :05:33.challenging is that? It is a challenge that I have not always
:05:34. > :05:39.met, if ever. My rhythm seems to be won every 18 months or to years.
:05:40. > :05:50.That may be a mixture of laziness and the failure of my imagination.
:05:51. > :05:54.The quality of the books will therefore increase if a writer has
:05:55. > :05:59.to concentrate on writing. Unless somebody has really hit an unusual
:06:00. > :06:03.sort of place. You see Philip Roth in the Indian summer of his career
:06:04. > :06:11.with the thrust of his coming out of the sky and into his fingertips. You
:06:12. > :06:19.are now writing a series. This is the second book about Thomas Kell.
:06:20. > :06:24.He is seeking redemption, as the publishers say. These heroes are
:06:25. > :06:29.always seeking redemption. Is he going to be the hero? Will you write
:06:30. > :06:33.endless books about him? I don't know about endless. He interests me
:06:34. > :06:40.as a character. There is great decency in him and hope in him, but
:06:41. > :06:44.there is also greyness and things that he has done that he is ashamed
:06:45. > :06:48.of. He is trying to come to terms with 20 years as an intelligence
:06:49. > :06:55.officer, but trying to live his life as a decent man. I don't believe in
:06:56. > :07:03.this sort of fashionable line about spies, that they are sociopath and
:07:04. > :07:07.maniacs. I know these people. I have spent time with them and they are no
:07:08. > :07:12.different to you and I. Or the people in this studio. I'm trying to
:07:13. > :07:15.get that and at the same time telling exciting story. We look
:07:16. > :07:16.forward to the next one. Thank you very much indeed, Charles Cumming.
:07:17. > :07:27.Thank you. Hello there. After a reasonable day
:07:28. > :07:32.for many it looks as though we will continue to see a fair amount of
:07:33. > :07:41.cloud but a quiet night. Mostly dry for many. There will be some fog
:07:42. > :07:46.around. Temperatures perhaps falling away.