Alan Judd Meet the Author


Alan Judd

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Readers of Alan Judd's spy stories first met Charles Thoroughgood

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when he was in the army, then when he was a trainee

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in the Secret Service, but now a few years on,

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He's top dog, but Whitehall doesn't work quite like that.

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In Deep Blue, Thoroughgood spends almost as much time fighting

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the bureaucracy around him and his rivals as the people

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who are trying to steal something important and dangerous.

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It might be thought by some people that when you reach the top

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of the tree in the secret world, you know everything,

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But in this book, Charles, your hero, discovers that

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many of the battles he's fighting aren't with the other side or some

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terrorist group or something, but with people around him.

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I think that's not peculiar to the secret world either.

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I think most organisations, maybe even the BBC, you might find

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you devote a lot of your energies to internecine warfare,

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or to problems within the organisation which stop

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So that is part of Charles' dilemma and I think it's in a way easier

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to write a spy novel if you have things going on on the home front

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than if you're just fighting, as it were, the war abroad.

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And that's life particularly in that kind of world because there's

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so much you can't say, even to fairly close colleagues.

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I mean that might also be true in the BBC, who knows?

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I couldn't possibly comment, but that is the way

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Yes, there's a necessary compartmentalisation.

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of people in secret organisations tend not to talk about their secrets

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People in secret organisations tend not to talk about their secrets

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to other people in the organisation who have different secrets.

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One of the things about Deep Blue, and I'm not going to go

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into the plot because it would ruin it for anyone who

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One of the things about it is that there's a kind of old-fashioned

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quality to it in a sense that the crises, the threats,

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the panic doesn't really change with the ages.

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I mean, there might be different technology.

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You might be intercepting phone calls in a contemporary way that

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you couldn't have done before, but the fundamentals

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No, I think the fundamentals of spying don't change.

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It's often said to the second oldest profession and essentially,

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you're dealing with intelligence, with people telling other

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people secrets, or not telling them secrets,

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And there are various ways in which the telling can happen.

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It can be technical, it can be person to person,

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or it could be whatever you like, but essentially, you're dealing

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And, of course, what is not said is often as important as what is said.

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What makes Charles Thoroughgood, your central character,

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whom we met originally in Legacy when he was training

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to be an officer in MI6, what makes him good at his job?

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Well, I think he, erm, well I'm not always sure he is good

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at his job and it's a bit of an accident, he's

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He never expected to and it was only because of treachery

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within the higher circles that he did.

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I think he's good at his job because he's determined to get

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I think that's what marks him out and he's not too committed to it.

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That's a very interesting observation.

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Do you mean that the people who are sometimes best at that

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kind of thing are people who despite perhaps moments

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of excitement, moments of, you know, important action,

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nonetheless keep it in perspective and make it only

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I think the best people do because after all,

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you're dealing with human beings and if you're not much

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of a human being yourself, you don't understand other human

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So you need that kind of perspective, or ought

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I suspect that anyone reading this book or its predecessors who doesn't

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know anything about you and perhaps reads a biography that says,

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a biographical note that says, former soldier and diplomat,

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might suspect that you have some experience of labouring

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in the secret vineyards, and you have, haven't you?

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People have said that about me in print and to my face.

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It's quite interesting that you should raise it.

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In that case, let's talk about the people that you may have

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reason to know something about and how they behave

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because you've talked about Thoroughgood not letting this

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Well, I think you've got to have a life outside what you do,

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If your life is wholly in what you do, you become confined

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within it and especially if you're working in the secret world,

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which is, you know, cut off from most other parts of humanity,

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it's a good idea to have an idea of what the rest of humanity's doing

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and to see that you are actually only part of a bigger picture.

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You say cut off from the rest of humanity, which of course

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is an interesting observation because it is inevitable,

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and we see this in your novel to the person of Thoroughgood

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and his friends, that you are engaged inevitably in deceit.

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Perhaps benign deceit of family and friends as well as,

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you know, the other side, whatever it may be at

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The question of deceit is really very interesting because in a way,

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I think for many people in the intelligence professions,

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honesty is the most important quality and they need to be

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You deceive the people you should deceive for the right reasons.

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You don't deceive just promiscuously or for the wrong reasons,

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and you have to be very honest with yourself about who you're

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Promiscuous deceit must be a hazard of the trade though?

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I mean, people learn techniques of deceit that could carry over

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And perhaps enjoy it a little bit too much.

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I think we all enjoy knowing a secret and it's a form of power

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Somebody once said to me, I think who's got reason

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to know about these things, that dealing in the secret world

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as Thoroughgood does, having reached the top particularly,

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what you're dealing with in the end is the riddle of power.

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What you're dealing with is trying to work out why someone is doing

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something, how they're using the power they have

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If you apply it to the British system, the British intelligence

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agencies, for example, do not have a great deal of power

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in the British state, unlike many other countries

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The British intelligence agencies essentially advise.

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They provide information and governments make the decision.

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So real power lies with Whitehall governance, but of course within any

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organisation there are power structures and of course there's

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Why do you enjoy writing about this world?

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You've been celebrated for a series of remarkable short novels,

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some of them almost novellas, and yet you return to this theme.

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What does it allow you to do as a writer that you enjoy?

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I think it allows for an element of humour,

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I mean, not to make them very funny books, so you could do entirely

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humorous books about the secret world, but whenever

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people are trying to be secret, things go wrong.

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I mean if you arrange to a man with red hair,

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I mean if you arrange to meet a man with red hair,

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six foot seven in the nearest bar to the BBC here tonight at six

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o'clock, you'd go into that bar and there'd be four them.

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All carrying the Daily Telegraph under their left arm.

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Well, I haven't decided because each of the Thoroughgood spy novels

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was never written with a successor in mind, so I've always had

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I would never have made him chief early on if I thought

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And that, of course, is power by another name.

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Alan Judd, author of Deep Blue out in paperback, thank you very much.

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Good evening. We really have seen lots of showers today, some

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thunderstorms for good measure, this was the scene at Edgbaston earlier

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today. I'm surprised we got as much play as we did. We look at what has

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been happening and

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