:00:00. > :00:09.Readers of Alan Judd's spy stories first met Charles Thoroughgood
:00:10. > :00:12.when he was in the army, then when he was a trainee
:00:13. > :00:15.in the Secret Service, but now a few years on,
:00:16. > :00:19.He's top dog, but Whitehall doesn't work quite like that.
:00:20. > :00:22.In Deep Blue, Thoroughgood spends almost as much time fighting
:00:23. > :00:26.the bureaucracy around him and his rivals as the people
:00:27. > :00:29.who are trying to steal something important and dangerous.
:00:30. > :00:49.It might be thought by some people that when you reach the top
:00:50. > :00:51.of the tree in the secret world, you know everything,
:00:52. > :01:00.But in this book, Charles, your hero, discovers that
:01:01. > :01:03.many of the battles he's fighting aren't with the other side or some
:01:04. > :01:05.terrorist group or something, but with people around him.
:01:06. > :01:10.I think that's not peculiar to the secret world either.
:01:11. > :01:14.I think most organisations, maybe even the BBC, you might find
:01:15. > :01:17.you devote a lot of your energies to internecine warfare,
:01:18. > :01:19.or to problems within the organisation which stop
:01:20. > :01:26.So that is part of Charles' dilemma and I think it's in a way easier
:01:27. > :01:30.to write a spy novel if you have things going on on the home front
:01:31. > :01:33.than if you're just fighting, as it were, the war abroad.
:01:34. > :01:37.And that's life particularly in that kind of world because there's
:01:38. > :01:42.so much you can't say, even to fairly close colleagues.
:01:43. > :01:45.I mean that might also be true in the BBC, who knows?
:01:46. > :01:47.I couldn't possibly comment, but that is the way
:01:48. > :01:52.Yes, there's a necessary compartmentalisation.
:01:53. > :01:57.of people in secret organisations tend not to talk about their secrets
:01:58. > :01:59.People in secret organisations tend not to talk about their secrets
:02:00. > :02:02.to other people in the organisation who have different secrets.
:02:03. > :02:05.One of the things about Deep Blue, and I'm not going to go
:02:06. > :02:08.into the plot because it would ruin it for anyone who
:02:09. > :02:12.One of the things about it is that there's a kind of old-fashioned
:02:13. > :02:14.quality to it in a sense that the crises, the threats,
:02:15. > :02:16.the panic doesn't really change with the ages.
:02:17. > :02:18.I mean, there might be different technology.
:02:19. > :02:21.You might be intercepting phone calls in a contemporary way that
:02:22. > :02:28.you couldn't have done before, but the fundamentals
:02:29. > :02:38.No, I think the fundamentals of spying don't change.
:02:39. > :02:40.It's often said to the second oldest profession and essentially,
:02:41. > :02:42.you're dealing with intelligence, with people telling other
:02:43. > :02:44.people secrets, or not telling them secrets,
:02:45. > :02:47.And there are various ways in which the telling can happen.
:02:48. > :02:50.It can be technical, it can be person to person,
:02:51. > :02:52.or it could be whatever you like, but essentially, you're dealing
:02:53. > :02:57.And, of course, what is not said is often as important as what is said.
:02:58. > :03:04.What makes Charles Thoroughgood, your central character,
:03:05. > :03:08.whom we met originally in Legacy when he was training
:03:09. > :03:12.to be an officer in MI6, what makes him good at his job?
:03:13. > :03:17.Well, I think he, erm, well I'm not always sure he is good
:03:18. > :03:20.at his job and it's a bit of an accident, he's
:03:21. > :03:29.He never expected to and it was only because of treachery
:03:30. > :03:30.within the higher circles that he did.
:03:31. > :03:33.I think he's good at his job because he's determined to get
:03:34. > :03:38.I think that's what marks him out and he's not too committed to it.
:03:39. > :03:42.That's a very interesting observation.
:03:43. > :03:46.Do you mean that the people who are sometimes best at that
:03:47. > :03:49.kind of thing are people who despite perhaps moments
:03:50. > :03:54.of excitement, moments of, you know, important action,
:03:55. > :03:56.nonetheless keep it in perspective and make it only
:03:57. > :04:00.I think the best people do because after all,
:04:01. > :04:02.you're dealing with human beings and if you're not much
:04:03. > :04:05.of a human being yourself, you don't understand other human
:04:06. > :04:08.So you need that kind of perspective, or ought
:04:09. > :04:13.I suspect that anyone reading this book or its predecessors who doesn't
:04:14. > :04:16.know anything about you and perhaps reads a biography that says,
:04:17. > :04:19.a biographical note that says, former soldier and diplomat,
:04:20. > :04:22.might suspect that you have some experience of labouring
:04:23. > :04:30.in the secret vineyards, and you have, haven't you?
:04:31. > :04:35.People have said that about me in print and to my face.
:04:36. > :04:37.It's quite interesting that you should raise it.
:04:38. > :04:42.In that case, let's talk about the people that you may have
:04:43. > :04:44.reason to know something about and how they behave
:04:45. > :04:46.because you've talked about Thoroughgood not letting this
:04:47. > :04:55.Well, I think you've got to have a life outside what you do,
:04:56. > :05:00.If your life is wholly in what you do, you become confined
:05:01. > :05:03.within it and especially if you're working in the secret world,
:05:04. > :05:06.which is, you know, cut off from most other parts of humanity,
:05:07. > :05:10.it's a good idea to have an idea of what the rest of humanity's doing
:05:11. > :05:13.and to see that you are actually only part of a bigger picture.
:05:14. > :05:19.You say cut off from the rest of humanity, which of course
:05:20. > :05:21.is an interesting observation because it is inevitable,
:05:22. > :05:25.and we see this in your novel to the person of Thoroughgood
:05:26. > :05:30.and his friends, that you are engaged inevitably in deceit.
:05:31. > :05:33.Perhaps benign deceit of family and friends as well as,
:05:34. > :05:36.you know, the other side, whatever it may be at
:05:37. > :05:41.The question of deceit is really very interesting because in a way,
:05:42. > :05:46.I think for many people in the intelligence professions,
:05:47. > :05:49.honesty is the most important quality and they need to be
:05:50. > :05:55.You deceive the people you should deceive for the right reasons.
:05:56. > :06:00.You don't deceive just promiscuously or for the wrong reasons,
:06:01. > :06:03.and you have to be very honest with yourself about who you're
:06:04. > :06:09.Promiscuous deceit must be a hazard of the trade though?
:06:10. > :06:15.I mean, people learn techniques of deceit that could carry over
:06:16. > :06:21.And perhaps enjoy it a little bit too much.
:06:22. > :06:28.I think we all enjoy knowing a secret and it's a form of power
:06:29. > :06:36.Somebody once said to me, I think who's got reason
:06:37. > :06:39.to know about these things, that dealing in the secret world
:06:40. > :06:41.as Thoroughgood does, having reached the top particularly,
:06:42. > :06:44.what you're dealing with in the end is the riddle of power.
:06:45. > :06:49.What you're dealing with is trying to work out why someone is doing
:06:50. > :06:54.something, how they're using the power they have
:06:55. > :07:05.If you apply it to the British system, the British intelligence
:07:06. > :07:08.agencies, for example, do not have a great deal of power
:07:09. > :07:09.in the British state, unlike many other countries
:07:10. > :07:14.The British intelligence agencies essentially advise.
:07:15. > :07:17.They provide information and governments make the decision.
:07:18. > :07:23.So real power lies with Whitehall governance, but of course within any
:07:24. > :07:25.organisation there are power structures and of course there's
:07:26. > :07:30.Why do you enjoy writing about this world?
:07:31. > :07:37.You've been celebrated for a series of remarkable short novels,
:07:38. > :07:40.some of them almost novellas, and yet you return to this theme.
:07:41. > :07:43.What does it allow you to do as a writer that you enjoy?
:07:44. > :07:48.I think it allows for an element of humour,
:07:49. > :07:55.I mean, not to make them very funny books, so you could do entirely
:07:56. > :07:57.humorous books about the secret world, but whenever
:07:58. > :07:59.people are trying to be secret, things go wrong.
:08:00. > :08:09.I mean if you arrange to a man with red hair,
:08:10. > :08:11.I mean if you arrange to meet a man with red hair,
:08:12. > :08:16.six foot seven in the nearest bar to the BBC here tonight at six
:08:17. > :08:18.o'clock, you'd go into that bar and there'd be four them.
:08:19. > :08:25.All carrying the Daily Telegraph under their left arm.
:08:26. > :08:35.Well, I haven't decided because each of the Thoroughgood spy novels
:08:36. > :08:38.was never written with a successor in mind, so I've always had
:08:39. > :08:43.I would never have made him chief early on if I thought
:08:44. > :08:47.And that, of course, is power by another name.
:08:48. > :08:58.Alan Judd, author of Deep Blue out in paperback, thank you very much.
:08:59. > :09:11.Good evening. We really have seen lots of showers today, some
:09:12. > :09:15.thunderstorms for good measure, this was the scene at Edgbaston earlier
:09:16. > :09:17.today. I'm surprised we got as much play as we did. We look at what has
:09:18. > :09:18.been happening and