Secrets, leaks and the novel. Writers, British intelligence and the public sphere after World War Two

Abstract

This article makes a pioneering effort to explore the relationship between spy fiction, intelligence and the public sphere in Britain after World War Two. The secret British achievements of code-breaking, atomic science and deception in the World War of 1939–45 were outstanding. Similarly, the British contribution to spy fiction in the twentieth century has been seen as exceptional. However, the complex interconnections between the history and fictions of intelligence in the post-war decades have never been closely examined. This is a period during which the British state aggressively sought to suppress memoirs and histories written by wartime secret warriors. Other writers who chose to disclose aspects of their intelligence work through the idiom of spy fiction, however, met with a rather different response. In this period, we argue therefore, the relatively unpoliced spy story emerged as a tolerated form of leakage for wartime secrets. The public reputation of the British security establishment underwent a serious decline in the post-war years, in the wake of successive scandals and defections. British intelligence made a number of attempts to repair its battered image in this era, for example publicising a key case involving a Soviet double agent working for the West. However, fiction remained a key terrain on which an ongoing battle for the reputation of British intelligence continued to be fought out. From the early 1960s a significant new form began to emerge: the ‘New Realism’ of John le Carré. Widely accepted as an authentic image of the British intelligence ‘circus,’ these stories portrayed the British secret state in a strikingly harsh and revealing light. Working directly in response to le Carré, writers like John Bingham sought to counter with an altogether more positive impression of secret service. Again, the spy novel provided a key platform on which struggles over the public image of intelligence were fought out. In this way the essay draws together the history and fictions of the post-war decades to reveal an intimate correspondence between writers, secret service and the public understanding of intelligence.