Audiobook Review: The spy who came in from the fold
David Cornwell, known by his pen name John le Carre, who died in 2018 aged 89 after a battle with pneumonia. Matt Crossick/PA Wire
Regular readers of this column might recall that I enjoy a good spy yarn on audio. Something about the suspense, the cloak and dagger, the taut dialogue and high stakes makes the genre perfect for the intimate experience of audio.
The original fiction spy master himself John Le Carré was sadly lost to us last year. In amongst the deserved deluge of tributes was one from Ben Macintyre whose own nonfiction spy work was heavily influenced by Le Carré. Macintyre wrote a wonderful piece about a man whom he described as his writing companion. They would meet in London restaurants and Le Carré would reminisce about his days in M15 and the high stakes poker game of deception that spies live in. It poured onto every page he wrote, and he summed up his work as “Jeopardy, on every page, we have to know what’s at stake.”
I went back to the beginning to rediscover le Carré and “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”. This was the book that sent le Carré into the stratosphere as a writer and, speaking decades after its release, it also sent him into a fit of rage. The book caused such a stir that the press believed it must come from a spy laying out the secrets of the trade. Of course Le Carré’s posting in the service was far less glamourous than the traditional idea of a spy but as he explained, once the world’s press believed he was a spy turned writer he would forever be battling that moniker.
His first major success is arguably his finest work. While George Smiley, the most feted of his characters operates mostly in the shadows here, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is a perfect Cold War tale. Deception and heartbreak abound and when the double cross of the double cross arrives, it is handled with a customary le Carré jab.
Read by Michael Jayston who manages to maintain an apt, cold detachment throughout, the seven hours run time flies by. You will be lost in a fog of searchlights and wide eyes, of deep suspicion and finally, as only le Carré can deliver, deep sinking realisation of the plot that has always been afoot.
2021 already feels like a tipping point when it comes to the power and influence of money and Social Media platforms in politics and while Democracy for sale; dark money and dirty politics is not strictly about the reach of the likes of facebook in politics, it is a very timely treatise on what technology allied to dark money can achieve.
Released last year in print, it is only just available on audio with author Peter Geoghegan doing a fine job of narrating. Geoghegan works for Open Democracy, an independent global media platform which has done some stirring work in exposing some of the shadier aspects of western democracy over the last few years.
It is Brexit and the likes of Dominic Cummings and Aaron Banks that are the villains of the book. Cummings for his Machiavellian machinations and Banks for his near cartoonish distain for the norms of politics but Geoghegan is carefully balanced in his appraisals of the so-called bad boys of Brexit. He is most animated in his presentation of the weak spots of democracy; near zero oversight or consequences for breaking campaign finance rules for example.
The book emphasises that democracy is a fragile entity. Geoghegan is at pains to point out that we do not know if the Brexit vote would have been different had more stringent rules applied and often points out the advantages the Remain campaign had and squandered. It is illuminating to hear about David Cameron’s government paying vast amounts to drop leaflets into households while Dominic Cummings and the Leave campaign were funnelling smaller amounts into highly targeted audiences with a very specific message online.
This book is a plea for us to start shining a light on where money comes from in politics and the messages that are being increasingly individualised and weaponised to turn elections.
