Spymasters: The Great Spy Writers

From Kipling and Greene to the Cold War

The first chapter, Kipling to Graham Greene, introduces writers including Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan. The next turns to Cold War storytelling through Alistair MacLean, Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré. The programme also uses film material including The Ipcress File and The Third Man.

Fleming, Bond and more recent intelligence history

The third episode concentrates on Ian Fleming and the effect of James Bond on literature and film. Its description also raises Bond’s influence on actual intelligence. The fourth, Len Deighton to Mick Herron, brings recent intelligence history into the survey, including Oleg Gordievsky’s defection and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Across its four chapters, the programme compares how writers from different periods imagine espionage: the kind of hero they create, the dangers they portray and the relationship between an individual and an institution. Literary history and the history of intelligence work meet in those changing fictional worlds.