In this week’s Six Secrets we dig up intel on six real-life British spies-turned-authors. All of them have a shadowy past with the security services from MI5 spymaster Stella Rimington to MI6’s Graham Greene and James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming. When it comes to double-crossing and subterfuge, nobody does it better.
Stella Rimington
Stella Rimington is the inspiration for Dame Judi Dench’s fabulous portrayal of 007’s boss ‘M’ - a formidable female operative in a male-dominated field. Rimington climbed to the top job as Director-General of MI5. Now she’s climbing best-seller lists with her Liz Carlyle series of spy books, a gritty depiction of espionage that’s captured the world’s dark heart.
Is he or isn’t he? Charles Cumming flirted with becoming an MI6 agent but claims he was caught in a British honeytrap and fell at the first hurdle… although a secret agent would say that, wouldn’t he? SPYSCAPE wades into the murky world of Charles Cumming, often mooted as the heir to John le Carré’s literary legacy.
Long before 007 smoldered on the big screen there was Royal Navy officer Ian Fleming. Some of Fleming’s proposed missions were too crazy to carry out. Others, like Operation Mincemeat, changed the course of WWII. Our True Spies podcast catches up with Fleming at the Admiralty Building where he’s better known by his code name, ‘17F’.
William Somerset Maugham was a natural spy - clever, witty, and fluent in three languages. Maugham was already leading a double life when he joined British intelligence in WWI, flitting between his English financée and male lovers. He is known as the first author of spy books who actually worked in espionage, sharing his secrets in Ashden and plotting with his friend Ian Fleming.
With John le Carré, secrecy was a survival instinct. His life was a paradox: an inside man in self-imposed exile. Secrets are still spilling out about le Carré even years after his death - including his 20-year affair with mistress Suleika Dawson. So who was author David John Moore Cornwell, really?
Graham Greene raised eyebrows when he wrote a sympathetic introduction to Kim Philby’s autobiography and visited the KGB double agent in Moscow to knock back Vodka and relive old times. Was the author of Our Man in Havana in thrall to Philby’s communist ideology or an unwitting accomplice aiding a deadly Cold War spymaster?
