The good wizard from the "Lord of the Rings" popped up just after I posted the question on Twitter.
Gandalf is wise, compassionate and stubborn when he needs to be. Best of all, he knows how to vanish and reappear at will!
Steve said he'd like to be George Smiley from the terrific John le Carré novels and I like this choice! Smiley is brilliantly ordinary and unassuming, as a good spy should be.
Listen to how le Carré described him in the 1961 novel "Call for the Dead":
"Short, fat and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about on his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad."
He's the antithesis of James Bond, isn't he?
Karen said she'd like to experience the life of Karana in "Island of the Blue Dolphins" because "she faced every challenge." Naomi wrote that she could imagine herself as Dana Scully from the X Files. "She was smart, brave, tough and questioned everything."
Indeed, Scully inspired Naomi into a career as a scientist. I love that!
Katie tweeted in to say she named her daughter for Anne Shirley, the extraordinary and spirited young girl in "Anne of Green Gables."
Remember Anne's imagination, resilience and bravery? What an honor to be named for her!
And writer N. West Moss, author of the memoir "Flesh & Blood," tweeted that she finds meaning in the lives of two characters from literature:
First, Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens' novel "Great Expectations" because she reminds us "not to pause one's life at its highest injustice."
And West adds, "Joe Gargery for his unassuming love for Pip," the narrator in "Great Expectations."
Jen turned to the "Star Trek" character Miles O'Brien. "He's a normal guy," she said, "doing his best in an extraordinary universe. You don't have to be 'special' to be important."
Jen added: "Yes, fixing the warp core is critical but when those replicators go offline people lose their cool. Life is about the B storylines."
— Kerri Miller | MPR News
If you want to be a real literary spy best read this non-promotional anecdote and if you love JLC you'll love this! Talking of espionage, whether you’re a le Carré connoisseur, a Deighton disciple, a Fleming fanatic, a Herron hireling or a Macintyre marauder you will love this anecdote. If you don't love all such things you might learn something so read on!
ReplyDeleteThere is one category of secret agent that is often overlooked … namely those who don’t know they have been recruited. For more on that topic we suggest you read Beyond Enkription (explained below) and this very current article on that topic by the ex-spook Bill Fairclough. The article can be found at TheBurlingtonFiles.org website in the News Section. The article (dated July 21, 2021) is about “Russian Interference”; it’s been read over 20,000 times. Anyway, since you seem to be interested in all things espionage we guess you’re interested in Oleg Gordievsky, so this anecdote should make for compulsory reading.
John le Carré described Ben Macintyre’s fact based novel, The Spy and The Traitor, as “the best true spy story I have ever read”. It was about Kim Philby’s Russian counterpart, a KGB Colonel named Oleg Gordievsky, codename Sunbeam. In 1974 Gordievsky became a double agent working for MI6 in Copenhagen which was when Bill Fairclough aka Edward Burlington unwittingly launched his career as a secret agent for MI6. Fairclough and le Carré knew of each other: le Carré had even rejected Fairclough’s suggestion in 2014 that they collaborate on a book. As le Carré said at the time, “Why should I? I’ve got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?” A realistic response from a famous expert in fiction in his eighties!
Gordievsky never met Fairclough, but he did know Fairclough’s handler, Colonel Alan McKenzie aka Colonel Alan Pemberton. It is little wonder therefore that in Beyond Enkription, the first fact based novel in The Burlington Files espionage series, genuine double agents, disinformation and deception weave wondrously within the relentless twists and turns of evolving events. Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 in London, Nassau and Port au Prince. Edward Burlington, a far from boring accountant, unwittingly started working for Alan McKenzie in MI6 and later worked eyes wide open for the CIA.
What happens is so exhilarating and bone chilling it makes one wonder why bother reading espionage fiction when facts are so much more breathtaking. The fact based novel begs the question, were his covert activities in Haiti a prelude to the abortion of a CIA sponsored Haitian equivalent to the Cuban Bay of Pigs? Why was his father Dr Richard Fairclough, ex MI1, involved? Richard was of course a confidant of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who became chief adviser to JFK during the Cuban missile crisis.
Len Deighton and Mick Herron could be forgiven for thinking they co-wrote the raw noir anti-Bond narrative, Beyond Enkription. Atmospherically it’s reminiscent of Ted Lewis’ Get Carter of Michael Caine fame. If anyone ever makes a film based on Beyond Enkription they’ll only have themselves to blame if it doesn’t go down in history as a classic espionage thriller.
By the way, the maverick Bill Fairclough had quite a lot in common with Greville Wynne (famous for his part in helping to reveal Russian missile deployment in Cuba in 1962) and has also even been called “a posh Harry Palmer”. As already noted, Bill Fairclough and John le Carré (aka David Cornwell) knew of each other but only long after Cornwell’s MI6 career ended thanks to Kim Philby. Coincidentally, the novelist Graham Greene used to work in MI6 reporting to Philby and Bill Fairclough actually stayed in Hôtel Oloffson during a covert op in Haiti (explained in Beyond Enkription) which was at the heart of Graham Greene’s spy novel The Comedians. Funny it’s such a small world!