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The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn’t easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.
In every war zone that I’ve been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.
I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.
If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.
Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.
My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak.
But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it’s the writer or the spy.
Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader’s daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.
The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James’s Park Tube station in London.