Spies Like Us.

The best thing about this early interview with John le Carré is not that he denied having been a spy, but that the interviewer, Malcolm Muggeridge, almost certainly knew he was going to deny it before he asked him the question, because Muggeridge himself worked in spying for the British. Indeed, it is a young Muggeridge whom you find showing up in Wodehouse's letters as the charming young embassy functionary charged with assisting the couple through their tricky rehabilitation as British citizens after their sojourn in Berlin. At the same time, unbeknownst to the Wodehouses, Muggeridge was observing the pair to assess whether they were, indeed, traitors. His ultimate conclusion that they weren't played a significant role in the British government deciding to leave the Wodehouses alone. And there he is, twenty years later, talking to another ex-spy, each of them happily operating on one level while both of them, it's pretty reasonable to assume, remain aware of the underlying reality. You can't help but be a little bit impressed by that. Or at least, I can't. Anyway, here's the interview. It's well worth a look. http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12208.shtml