le carre | The British Cold War

Sitting on a train pulled into the station I notice massive Billboards for John Le Carre’s A Legacy of Spies. The novel will become one of the best sellers of 2017 and will add to Le Carre’s oeuvre of exciting spy thrillers that many attempted to imitate; although none have come close to the drama and literary quality. His new book engages with themes of the reliability of historical sources and may well become known as Le Carre’s ‘History Novel’.

History is a vital part of the storyline with the past catching up with one of Le Carre’s earliest creations, Peter Guillam, who had featured in the previous Smiley novels as a supporting character. Now, however, the retired spymaster is the centre of the plot. Guillam is the subject of a Circus enquiry into the actions of the Covert department, headed by Smiley over 50 years ago, after the descendants of Alec Leamass and Liz Gold (who met their deaths in Le Carre’s breakthrough The Spy Who Came in From the Cold) bring legal action against the service.

The novel takes place simultaneously in the present and the early 1960s and directly compares the current security service with its Cold War incarnation. Both versions of the Service are ruthless and act with self-interest whilst creating scapegoats – including its former staff like Guillam – who is used to deflect the legal attention. A central feature of Le Carre’s novels is the conflict within the secret service; but whereas in the past he has pitted Smiley and co against internal traitors A Legacy of Spies pits the new ‘Circus’, which Guillam finds faceless and lacking in character and morals, against the old version that was beloved of the original Smiley series.

The novel’s narrative weaves the present with history. Peter is asked to read the official MI6 documentation and this jogs his memory into a number of internal reminisces about the events of the past. The official record is faulty with events omitted, made up or altered in order to protect the service’s agents from such future litigation and to prevent the Soviet double agents from betraying the spy networks to Moscow. The version of history emerging from the paper trail that the bureaucracy of espionage created and sought to protect from enemy spies cannot be trusted and it now needs protecting from the service itself.

The official record is contradicted by Guillam’s memory and what he is willing to reveal to his interrogators. Making sense of all this are the service’s lawyers and a section who are charged with recreating the past who explain that ‘we are history’. All of the sources are ultimately faulty: the doctored records; Peter’s aging memory, which perhaps embellishes his exploits and makes them seem much more daring and overtly ‘masculine’ than they actually were, and the untruths and half-truths that he tells interviewers in order to protect the truth.

Like all history the one that the History Section of the Service produces does not reveal the truth but is a narrative which is shaped by those able to find a voice in writing the documents and in shaping the official memory of the actions of its agents over 50 years ago. A Legacy of Spies should remind historians to be wary of ‘official’ histories and the ‘official record’.

Watching the first three episodes of The Game (dir: Toby Whithouse) viewers are transported back to an era of security that is reinforced by the cold war. The enemy is clear: The Soviet Union and they act predictably: by trying to undermine Britain and by evading its security services. In many ways this drama could have been written in the 1970s and the resemblance to both the original and more recent screen representations of John Le Carre’s work is stark. The difference, however, comes in the narrative perspective: whereas Le Carre’s protagonists tended to be the older members of the British security services – the George Smiley type – who plan and seek out the internal betrayal, The Game tends to focus on the youthful Joe Lambe (Tom Hughes) – a detached killer who for works for his country only so that he can pursue his own personal vendetta. The result is a faster paced thriller which still explores the contradictions and inter-service rivalry, which are interlaced with sexual and class politics, but which produces tensions which grip the viewer from start to finish.

The plot is an attempt by MI5 to uncover a Russian plan called ‘Operation Glass’. The deserter, Arkady, has revealed that this operation will change the face of intelligence work and the service must work out what the Russians plan. They have little idea and at first they think the Russians intend to arm the trade unions who are already waging a war against the British government. By the second episode, when a soviet agent tortures the Prime Minister’s secretary to reveal the contents of the Letters of last resort, given to nuclear submarine captains, their intuition turns towards the idea that ‘Operation Glass’ is a pre-emptive nuclear strike. This idea too is quickly dispensed with and by episode three it seems that the plan is to make the various British services consume each other, when an MI6 agent being framed by the Soviets. Suspicion permeates the series and the idea of a mole in who must be rooted out frames the series.

The plot takes place within the 1974 miners’ strike, which led to the three-day week, and ultimately defeated Heath’s Tory government. Power cuts intersperse the action and add tension, making the chiaroscuro shots darker than noir. There might, however, be a little too much signposting for a non-historical audience: shortly after the lights go out in episode three Sarah (Victoria Hamilton) comments ‘at least these power cuts make tailing easier’. Joe Lamb is a contradictory character whose realpolitik means that endangering lives to serve the greater good is an everyday occurrence. He manipulates his agents to get them to serve the country. When he forces the reluctant Soviet agent, David to entrap the Russians in episode one he tells him ‘this is an opportunity not just to repay your debt but be a hero, a soldier, to fight for something greater than us’, the same line he had given to his lover, Yulia, whose murder caused his own vendetta against the Russian agent ‘Odin’. The line is the kiss of death and like Yulia, David is promptly killed by Odin. Yet it is a line that raises questions of patriotism and service to Britain. This attitude underpins all that MI5 do. As the head of service ‘Daddy’ (Brian Cox) tells his agents ‘We endanger the few to protect the many’.

Throughout the series, viewers question stereotypical presentations of gender. Joe appears as a hypermasculine character: assertive yet emotionally distant ever since the murder of Yulia. He is somewhat flawed as a man but these flaws make him the efficient spy that he is. Sarah Montag is a strong female whose husband Alan (Jonathan Aris) claims is ‘destined for greater things’. His role as field sound expert means that he is the kind of aloof scientific expert. In episode one he has a list of ‘small talk’ topics written to break up the unbearable silences. Alan’s social awkwardness comes to fore when, ahead of David’s meeting with the Russian agent, he asks Joe if they have a coffin for David’s dead body. When this clearly makes David even more nervous Alan says ‘humour to lighten the mood’. Another item scratched off his list. Sarah is protective of Alan and when he is bullied by a public-school-type civil servant it is Sarah who has the confidence to challenge him. The Head of Counter-espionage, Bobby Waterhouse (Paul Ritter) appears untrustworthy and the series makers have this trait underpinned by his apparent hidden homosexuality. He hides his sexuality from his colleagues and lives with his mother, who appears to hate what she sees as his failure. His secret allows him to be dominated by those who find out. Wendy, ‘Daddy’’s secretary, who appears insecure, yet determined to succeed in her own career, becomes suddenly confident in his presence. How this will play out in the remaining three episodes remains to be seen.

Underpinning the whole series is the security of a normal enemy. In episode one Sarah sums up the intelligence war ‘It is a war of variables and unknowns and all we can do is watch, surmise and react’. Yet these variables and unknowns provide comfort in the 2010s when the threat is the home-grown fundamentalist terrorist. At the very least the Soviet’s intensions appear clear and their agents are predictable, if only in their unpredictability. The ‘Game’ itself is a metaphor that implies that there are rules and a set way of playing. Such a contrast with today’s ‘enemies’ is striking, and the series nostalgically evokes cold war insecurity.

The series so far is exciting and tense. Having missed the first three episodes I watched them all back to back. Intelligence work is presented as more realistic than in James Bond films but it lacks the bureaucratic plodding realism of a John Le Carre. I for one can’t wait for the next three episodes.