Conspirator by Humphrey Slater – The first Cold War novel?

I’ve always been fascinated with the history of the cold war spy novel. I had previously considered Atomsk, released in 1949 and written by Carmichael Smith, the first but it appears to only be the first US Cold War novel. The UK’s Humphrey Slater wrote Conspirator and beat Atomsk by a year.  Conspirator follows a …

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Letters of le Carré – News

After being teased by Nick Harkaway, one of le Carré's sons, during book events surrounding the release of Silverview we now have additional details on a book of John le Carré/David Cornwell correspondence. The book, currently titled A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré, 1945-2020, has a UK release date of November 3rd, …

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Best of 2020

With all the disruption of this past year, things have been a bit quieter on the site than normal. I’ve been focusing on podcasts over some of my longer written pieces which has taken a healthy chunk of time. That said, the year did have some highlights and in what is becoming a yearly tradition …

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Secret Lip Services – The honor John le Carré doesn’t want you to know about

Rarely am I shocked while reading a book, but this was the exception. As I perused my latest purchase, a binded transcript of a speech John le Carré gave at John Hopkins University in 1986 titled The Clandestine Muse, I had a shocking revelation. John le Carré had won Blistex lip balm’s 1985 “Most Beautiful …

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Quiller and Agents of Influence Podcasts

My regular posts have been a bit more sporadic of late as I've been working on a couple of special projects. First was hosting a two part podcast panel on Spybrary looking at Adam Hall's famous spy creation - Quiller. This resulted in a fair bit of research as I reread a bunch of the …

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Chicago Spies – Part One

Although it is not the first place you would think of having a spy pedigree - Chicago, Illinois - smack dab in the middle of the United States, does have a few notable spy connections. Over the next two posts I will discuss some of the real and fictional spies we’ve seen in Chicago. True …

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Interview with Toby Manning on John le Carré and the Cold War – Part Two

We conclude our interview with Toby Manning on his book John le Carré and the Cold War. Find part one here. When you’re done reading my interview listen to the Spybrary podcast interview with Toby Manning. Spy Write: It seems that le Carré's post-Cold War work may have been what muddied the waters regarding the “otherness” …

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The Fake le Carré Blurb Scandal

Finding books that John le Carré has recommended, contributed to or written introductions/forewords to has become something of a passion project for me. In the process of doing this research I came upon its flip side - the fake le Carré blurb scandal. Back in 1991 a writer named Derek Van Arman was involved in a …

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