Class Politics and Modern Espionage

The New States man Spies and stories about spies are among Britain's greatest cultural exports. From Ian Fleming's James Bond to the works of John LeCarey and Graham Green, it seems that in the world's eyes there is something quintessentially English about the double agent and his or her deadly deceptions. My guest today, the novelist and screenwriter William Boyd shares this fascination. Like LaCarey before him, he was inspired by the Cambridge Five, aspiring made up of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald McLean, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross, a group of infamous men who infiltrated the highest echelons of the government, passing information to the Soviet Union. Boyd first explored the theme of espionage in his 2002 novel Any Human Heart and went on to pen a James Bond continuation novel called Solo. His latest trilogy explores what happens when a travel writer becomes entangled in Cold War espionage. William Boyd joins me now in the studio . William Boyd, thank you for joining us at the here at the New Statesman. Um you've written about lots of subjects, you know, wars, the art world, Africa. But lately you've been devoted to spy fictions. What draws you to spies? Well it's uh a a longish story. I mean I st I wrote a novel called Any Human Heart and the uh he the central character is briefly a spy in World War II. He's recruited into the Naval Intelligence Division by Ian Fleming, no less. And um he's a very unsuccessful spy. But in this course of my researches for that particular episode in his long life, I became very intrigued by spies and spying, and in particular particularly our famous five traitors, the Cambridge Five, and even more focused on Kim Philby . And I was very curious about the psychology of being a spy, being a double agent, and wrote a novel called Restless, which is about a Philby figure and this young woman who becomes involved with him. And that was the beginning of Trevor Burrus Restless was the first spy novel you wrote. Yes, if you don't count it's the first bona fide spy novel, but um the sp spies and spying and or duplicity and identity change have been part of my fiction for a long time. But Restless was the first Bonafide spy novel, and it's set in World War II, and it's about British spying in the USA before the USA joined the the war, one of these forgotten periods of clandestine espionage that we were trying to manipulate American media so that the population would begin to think we must join the war in Europe. It's a huge campaign of disinformation and media manipulation. So that was my first proper spy novel. And having got the taste for it, I then wrote a World War I spy novel called Waiting for Sunrise. Then I wrote a James Bond novel, the continuation novel, and now I've written this trilogy of Cold War spy novels. And it's a genre that I that fits very well and there's a there's a rich tradition in our literature and uh Irish literature of um literary novelists, you know, moonlighting in the I mean is it is it something to do with a life that's lived kind of closely observing reality, noticing things, collecting information, even betraying the people in your lives? I mean this is something that perhaps writers have quite a lot in common with spies. Do you feel that? Aaron Powell Yes, I do. I mean I think there is a link in the in the way that novelists look at the world, you know, forensically and the way the spies do. I mean we look at it in uh uh to try to gather information, random uh information. But a spy is looking at the world in the same close gimlet-eyed way to make sure he doesn't uh fall victim to his profession. Um but I think there's a deeper link, and I think that one of the reasons that when you look back at the novelists who've written spy novels, starting with Joseph Conrad in nineteen oh nine with The Secret Agent, and then you go on to to Somerset More,ham James Bucken, Graham Green, Elizabeth Bowen, and then Muriel Spark, my contemporaries, Sebastian Folkes, Ian McEwen, John Banville. And I think the reason is that the world of spies and spying is effectively the human condition but writ large and with more at stake. I mean we've we've all hands up confession, we've all betrayed people and been betrayed, we've all lied and been lied to, we've all been duplicitous, we've all shifted our identities depending on the situation we find ourselves in, and these are all the tropes of spy fiction. So if you're a novelist, a literary novelist, you suddenly see this arena where you can explore all these very human elements but at the same time add a certain amount of danger and jeopardy and suspense and in writing a a spy novel. But there's so there's so is that overlap, I think, that makes it so appealing to to novelists who wouldn't normally write horror or science fiction or romantic or any of the other genres available. It's such a gift to a writer because it means that you can write essentially quite self-consciously you can write about yourself and about um you know what it means to be a writer, but do it in a d a t tremendously exciting way that's really interesting to readers and a lot of the time readers might not be picking up on the sort of self consciousness involved w you know, when writers write about spies. I mean do you do you think that's what you know, writers are often doing? They're essentially writing about them s their own dilemmas as writers through the the figure of the spy? Aaron Powell To a degree, I think. I think because uh because of what I've just said, that the that we sort of understand that world, even though we have no knowledge or I have no knowledge in of how that works, but of course there were writers, Graham Green was a Bonafide spy, Ian Fleming, John McCarray, Elizabeth Bowen worked for MI6. So there were a lot of novelists who have done time as as uh undercover agents or spies, but people like me or other writers who haven't still feel we have a kind of entree into that world because you understand the emotions and the tensions of it, because the as I say, they're very like It's almost as if it works both ways. Not only do uh not only are writers inclined to write about spies because they see this um uh likeness in in spies . Espion age uh secret services and recruiters s um seem to desire writers and have commonly recruited writers to their to their cause because, they 've seen in writers a quality that's useful to the practice of espionage. Yes, I think so. And I think you know, I have this theory that many writers have been stringers for MI five or MI six, you know, as it were temporary part-time spies, because under the guise of being a writer, you can go anywhere and you're not threatening. There's a very interesting writer who I sort of based my character, Gabriel Dax on, called Norman Lewis, who's most famous for a book called Naples forty four. But Norman Lewis, I'm convinced, and so his biographer, was working for MI six again run by Ian Fleming in the nineteen fifties 'cause Norman Lewis could go to Cuba as a writer, but you couldn't send a diplomat to Cuba in the same way. So the writers, journalists as well often are recruited as you know part time spies for the the bona fide organiz ations because they can go freely where other people maybe can't. So there there is this curious link historically with writers and you know some set Morm was a spy, but and a famous novelist and playwright, John Buccane, famous novelists. But they all worked for the security services as well. So there is this link. And that also makes the figure of the the journalist come spy a very useful character in spy fictions themselves. I mean very commonly you have um the main character the protagonist of a spy novel is a journalist or writer, and that's very common in the works of Graham Greene and so on. Have you um adopted that in any of your novels? Well, I think because I don't know anything about the bureaucracy of the Secret Service and the and its complex machinations. I have to have sort of innocent spies or reluctant spies, accidental spies, because unlike John LeCary or Graham Green um uh or Flem ing, um I I have had no contact with the official Secret Service. Um so I have to kind of make it up. You know, it is a novel, it's fiction. And so by having somebody who's a bit like me, a writer, who becomes suborned or inveigled into working for the Secret Service, you actually uncover things piece by piece, you are aware of how little you know. And so all my all the spies in my novels have been like that, people who have been reluctantly drawn into this web of duplicity and suddenly find they actually have a talent for it. Um and uh it's totally believable because anybody could be sucked in in that way. Uh and um so that that's the kind of modus operandi of my fiction, because I don't know how it really works, but I can imagine how it might work. Stay with us. Listen to the New Statesman podcasts ad-free by downloading the New Statesman app. It's available on iOS and Android. Links are in the show notes. On this week's episode of The Exchange, our Long Form Interviews Podcast, I spoke to Mary Beard about the weaponization of the classics. Listen now and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Save seventy-five per cent off a new statesman subscription this spring. Go to NewStatesman.com slash spring twenty six to subscribe today. We'll be back after this . Welcome back. Most recently you've been preoccupied with this trilogy uh around the the character Gabriel Dax. Could you tell us a little about Gabriel Dax and these um these three novels that you have written or are writing? Yes. Gabriel's Moon and The Predicament and the third novel in the trilogy, Cold Sunset, will be out in September. And I'm sure there will be more Gabriel Dax novels r uh down the line. But he's a it's a cold war espionage. It's like analogue spying, not digital spying. There are no mobile phones, no GPS satellites, no internet , so it's real nuts and bolts m agent in the field stuff, which is more appealing to me and I'm old enough to remember the nineteen sixties and and the cold war. And so I've set this young man, he's in his thirties, he's written three travel books, uh with some success. But his brother works for the foreign office and occasionally he does the odd job for his brother drop off a parcel here, meet a man there, pick up a letter, that sort of thing. And he is recruited by MI6 to do what looks like a very simple courier job. Go to Spain, buy a painting, bring it back. But in fact, it's the beginning of the end of his normal life in a way, because once he's hooked, once he's in the snares of MI six, and in particular this sort of rather daunting but alluring MI6 handler, Faith Green, who who runs him, and he becomes obsessed with her. He gets in deeper and deeper in the trilogy explores the extent of his involvement and the extent of his obsession with this this woman who is running him as her It's interesting you mentioned that um these novels are very much set in the world of analogue espionage. And it seems that we all we all kind of prefer those stories, the the classic kind of analogue espionage tales. I mean, even though there's probably much more potential in espionage in the world of, you know, the of the d contemporary sort of digital world Why do we prefer these sort of old fashioned tales of that take place in bookshops and art galleries and I think it's because spying today is essentially electronic surveillance or whistleblowing, which is actually, in term uh in terms of narrative excitement, not that great. And I would not be tempted to write a contemporary spy novel. I think it's far more fun and far more intriguing to think that if you want to call somebody up you have to find a phone box. Um and it's part of the t the pleasure is d is that time travel, going back to an era where you might send a postcard to somebody to say, Shall we meet for lunch next week? Uh and it just gives a whole um as I say, the whole nuts and bolts, the machinery of spying, a kind of recognizable human quality. And it r you wonder even how it functioned then. I mean I was I've been writing film scripts for a long time. We used to make movies without mobile phones. I can't imagine how that happened. But it did happen and it happened very successfully. Similarly with spying. Um you were sent on a as Gabriel Dax is sent on a mission to Spain. Um but when he wants to call his handler back in London, he has to book a call through the hotel operator and wait for the international connection to be made. Everything is slower, still communication, but it's slower. But it makes the the business of spying far more tactile and textured, I think, than it is today. Aaron Powell I mean you've already started to hint at the different traditions that exist in spy fiction. And I suppose you could put it this way. On the one hand, you've got the likes of John LeCarey and Len Dayton who wrote very starkly realistic sort of presentations of history and spying. And on the other hand, you could say you've got Ian Fleming and that sort of glamorous, glitzy, exciting um kind of uh uh espion age. Um and both are very popular. I mean where where do your sympathies lie, both as a reader and as a writer? Well I, mean, I I wrote a lot about Ian Fleming the Man before I was asked to write my Bond continuation novel. And I re read all of Fleming's Bond novels and short stories in chronological order , pencil in hand taking notes, and there's no doubt that a lot of them are very silly indeed, and so I definitely prefer the cold, clear eyed cynical version of spy novels. Fleming's case is a you know fascinating because he's created this mythic figure. But the bond of the novels is totally different from the Bond of the movies, and people shouldn't confuse the two. Fleming's novels are novels of the nineteen fifties, essentially, but all Bond films are set in the year they were shot, and so they're almost immediately out of date. Even Dr. No, the first Bond film was seven or eight years later than Fleming's novel. So they don't connect at all. And in writing my Bond novel, um which is set in nineteen sixty nine, so we're back in analogue spying, um and I have deliberately had no gadgets or evil uh men wanting to dominate the world. No s n no silliness at all. I tried to write a a Bond novel that was about this mythic figure in in all with all his warts and all, as it were. So that's my taste. Some people like the fantastical, preposterous nature of these stories, but I prefer something more rooted to reality. And do you think it's therefore justified for certain spy fictions to be taken as seriously and to be taken as literary fiction and most of the rest really to be sort of maybe not dismissed, but certainly sort of considered as genre fiction. Do you think that's sort of do you think the critics are okay are right about that? I think that's that's very fair. And I think that probably applies to all genres, whether you're looking at detective novels or crime novels or science fiction, you can tell there are certain writers which f in say in the science fiction genre who elevate that into something um lasting and and meaningful. And I think that's exactly the same with spy fiction. The fact that it's drawn so many British and Irish writers and and a few American writers. Those are the only two literatures which really have, you know, Norman Mailer wrote a spy novel. American writer Alan First, who writes excellent spy novels set in the Second World War. But they're serious works of fiction as well as compelling and exciting reads. And I think that's the- that's the difference. There's a a level of intellectual effort that makes them uh different from the kind of run-of-the-mill examples. Aaron Ross Powell What's your favorite spy novel? Aaron Ross Powell for instance. Aaron Ross Powell Well I think I've I've written the introduction to the Penguinern Mod Classics edition of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. And I think in a way, for me, that is the kind of that's when the genre shifted. I mean, I love the Ipcrest file by Len Dayton as well. But Le Carrie's Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a very short novel. It's utterly baffling. Um and in a way that I think is another appeal of the spy novel. You as a reader you have to pay attention, otherwise you may have missed the point. And I so I think this that for me, I think the you know the great exemplar, uh though you know, you could argue um that the secret agent w of by Joseph Conrad is is uh Erskine Childer's Riddle of the Sands. These novels stand out, but for me as a young reader, when I read The Spy Who Came In From the C Cold, um sort of scales fell from my eyes. It's a very bleak novel, very bitter novel. And Le Care kind of vented his own frustrations and his own perceptions that actually even though the Russians were meant to be the bad guys , we could behave as badly as them if required. So it was a sort of revelation in the world of spy fiction that this kind of um cynicism, if you like, with this kind of uh gimlet-eyed honesty became par for the course. Even when I was a child, or when I was younger, I was really put off by spy novels. Um they always seemed a bit ridiculous, a bit a bit silly. Even you mentioned, you know, Len Dayton. The the whole idea of the Ipcrest file, this sort of brainwashing technique. But then when I read um Le Carrie, the spy who came from the cold, uh it was was I was blown away by it. I was quite young then, but um I sensed something of of its sort of psychological realism and starkness. There's also something peculiarly English about spy fictions and the car the you know, the famous characters in spy fictions. Um I mean what's that all about? I mean uh uh this there's something so um uh essentially English about characters like well not just characters, real life characters like uh Kim Philby or Anthony Blunt, you know, who's master of the Queen's Pictures and so on. I mean w why is there this kind of English this sense of Englishness so tightly bound up with the phenomenon of espionage. Well I think it I think a lot of it in our literature, in particular, is to do with the Cambridge Five and the fact that these privileged, well-educated, middle class English men decided to become Soviet double agents. I sort of rather flippantly say we we do certain things very well in this country, dictionaries, bespoke tailoring and portraying our country because th those five traitors were extraordinary and I think and Le Carrie was obsessed with Philby and Philby's betrayal I think colours almost all the novels he he wrote. I think that for a British writer contemplating the Cold War, these five people, you know, Burgess McLean, Philby, Blunt, Cairncross, are absolutely fascinating. And I think that's what drew me into the genre. So trying to understand how Kim Philby, for who was possi bly going to be the head of MI6. He was so highly regarded, but for twenty years maintained this phenomenal double life. His wives didn't know he was a Soviet double agent. Unbelievably I mean, how did he survive the the day-by-day tensions of that? Um and then he successfully defected in nineteen sixty-three and lived out the rest of his life in Moscow. He's a absolutely compelling figure, and trying to get to the bottom of his nature is um really good raw material for a novelist. So I think that's I think in our case, particularly post-World War II , the the effect of the this these traitors being exposed has completely dominated the way we think about Yes. And Philby , you know, he betrays his country, but he also at some level really loves his country. When he's holed up in Russia, he misses you know, the cricket and all all of these very English things. And I suppose there's a sort of doubleness there that's that's so appealing. He there was a lot of special pleading. I've read his memoir. I mean Graham Green wrote an introduction to his autobiography. Um Green was a friend. About this supposed friendship between Graham Green and Kim Philby. Well, I think I mean I actually gave a um an endorsement to that book. I read it. I thought it was absolutely fascinating because A , was I in interested Philbium, also very interested in Graham Greene as a as a man, as an individual. And I had certain things I hadn't realized that that book showed me was that they were colleagues in MI6 . In the early years of World War II, they worked together in the same department. In fact, Philby was Green's boss, and Philby sent him off to Sierra Leone to be the kind of uh head of station in that West A frican country. And I hadn't realized until I'd read this book just how close their uh espionage lives were. And then Green mysteriously resigned from MI6 in nineteen forty-four, just before D-Day. And the theory is that he realized that his friend, Kim Philby, was a Russian double agent, and so rather than betray him, he just backed off. Then later in life he was very supportive of him. But uh it's a very interesting decision uh that he took uh in nineteen forty four and I think that the case that the author makes that Green suddenly became aware that this charming, delightful man was actually the super spy, as the Russians called him, and decided rather than expose him, he would just disappear. How do you feel about a figure like Philby? I'm I mean someone like Graeme Green clearly was remarkably tolerant of of his um treachery. On the other hand, you know, many people in you know British culture, British history have just been completely horrified by what Philby did, you know. There's that famous essay by George Steiner which ends Damn the man . How do you feel about it? Well I think he's there's no doubt that he was a traitor and we we should condemn traitors. But what's fascinating from a novelist 's point of view is what made him betray his c country. And I came up with this theory that there are three reasons why anybody becomes a traitor or a double agent. One is blackmail, one is money, and the other I think is hatred of your country. And I think Philby, I can't prove it, but I think Phil bec in the nineteen tw enties and thirties came to hate the British establishment and because fascism was on the rise and communism seemed to be the only answer to fascism, became a Soviet double agent. But the minute the Soviet Nazi pact came about in 193 9 , you'd realize that communist Russia was actually not any better than uh Nazi Germany. But Philby kept on working for uh the Russians uh right up until the nineteen sixties. Um why? And I think it was a kind of disgust and he s almost says it in in his memoirs, you know the there's some paraphrasing that he says there are certain things about English, he always said English life which I deplore and reject, but it's still the best country in the world. Ha ha ha. So I my feeling is that there's a kind of hatred grew up in in all these people for the British establishment. at the time And you have to remember, in the in the twenties and the 30s, before World War II, we were the hegemon. We were the dominant power. And we were arrogant and complacent and the kind of attitudes that went with that kind of power could be seen as deplorable and needing to be undermined. And I f have a feeling that that's what all these five men, young men, felt. I can't prove it, but it has a certain plausibility. So they had a sort of revulsion for the British establishment. At the same time , their own case became a reason for widespread revulsion of the British establishment because they were seen as as being part of that the corruption in the establishment. Totally, yes. I mean, you if you I've I've reviewed um I reviewed for the New Statesman a a very good biography of Donald McLean, who was a rising star in the in the diplomatic service, was one of the youngest ever first secretaries, but was a Soviet double agent and gave away very important information. Um why did he do that? It's it's a f I think this is that ex that question, you know, that simple question explains the enduring fascination with those five and the and the sort of spin-off into spy fictions and analyses of what they did and what motivated them. Aaron Powell And you're right, there is an enduring fascination, and that's partly perhaps because we imagine these issues can't have gone away. I mean you look at the British establishment today. Do you think it still to this day has people betraying their country within it? It's it seems it seems highly probable that that these problems are still there. Yes. And I think the other thing you have to remember is that British society is massively class-ridden and class-determined still today. And that was the other thing that these five young men, even though they came from the sort of upper middle classes, were were revolting against. That it's uh i th th that that world this may sound paradoxical, that world of uh nineteen thirties Britain hasn't really gone away. It's just more hidden. This country is absolutely control led and determined by the class differences that exist in society to an extraordinary degree, all societies have class differences and countries that I know as well as I know this one, France and America USA, for example, have similar kind of elites who exercise extraordinary power. But this country, and I will say this to f foreign friends of mine, if you say, if you want to understand British society, look at its educational system . Five percent of the population go to private schools. Um it's always been that percentage. Uh and and the power that that small percentage has and oper ates is uh still as pervasive today as it was in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. So the structural problems that um led to those crises uh of loyalty in the tw entieth century, they haven't gone away, you're saying, and they're still ripe for exploitation by bad actors. Well, I I would I would imagine so. And um but but I think because spying has changed, because it's now all about eavesdropping essentially, electronic eavesdropping, or whistleblowing, that somebody like Snowden, the famous whistleblower, is is is not a typical spy . And similarly, GCHQ, who are listening into everything we do, is uh is a kind of anonymous face of the espionage world. It's when you go back in time and you see that certain individuals, you know, heads of the secret service, for example, wield ed extraordinary powers, but they're all drawn from the same class. That's the interesting thing. Um and um that was the ruling class of the Brit ish nation and empire, and to an extraordinary degree it still is but it's it's more cleverly operated and more hidden now. You could go to, for example , uh uh a club in Pall Mall and walk in and it Evelyn War would recognize it. You know, it nothing much has changed. It's just gone slightly underground. And so it's interesting to look at the the world when it hadn't gone underground and it was operating brazen ly and with full confidence. Class politics can explain to some degree why many people in Britain um were drawn to the Soviet Union and its um you know its communist ideology. With today's sort of geopolitical setup, Russia is still kind of in play . And there are people in politics and in journalism and the media and among the public who have this sort of sympathy with Russia or interested in um the Russian point of view and sometimes in many cases um have gone over and sort of given information and and that and that kind of thing. Why do people do that? Yeah. I can't I can't personally can't see it. I mean Putin is a monster, I think, and w what he's what he set rolling in Ukraine is uh probably going to bring him down, I I hope. Um I don't understand uh maybe it's the allure of the so-called strong man Why did right wing politicians think Victor Auburn was such a a good guy? You know, now he's gone, thank goodness. But it's uh I suspect it's the it's that appeal of authoritarianism and and it's symbolized by certain leaders and s and certain countries, but look closely and uh any any right-thinking person would recoil from it. So I don't understand why people see any validity in Putin's Russia at all. But um I can by a thought experiment imagine s a few deluded s Q and souls think if only we had a strong man at the helm everything would be better. Are there any circumstances in which you would portray your country? I mean, let's say I mean you just mentioned Viktor Orban, you know. Well, let's say we had a far right government in this country, li uh like Viktor Orban or worse. Do you think you could bring yourself to I I wish could say I was an intrepid soul, but I I I'm not. I certainly would uh I've certainly written a lot about uh corrupt politicians and in in Africa and uh here in this country, um for for European newspapers. So um I I have tried to explain what's going on uh as as best as I could. Um but I'm I'm I'm not sure if the circumstances would ever arrive where I would um but who knows, maybe maybe I would. It j you'd never know what what your situation you're going to f find yourself in, but um uh you know which side you're on, I think, and uh you'll do what you can to support that side to the best of your ability. Uh William Boyd, it's been fascinating talking to you about sp ies, fictions and um your forthcoming novels. Um thanks for joining us here at the New Statesman. Thank you very much indeed. You've been listening to the New Society from the New Statesman with me, Tanjil Rashid and William Boyd