George Smiley Had A Queen Anne House. The Leading Characters In 'A Spy Among Friends'

[sandyRoe]

Were clearly Oxbridge men, but the leader in Slow Horses looks as though he might live in a doss house.

Is this declasse representation of spys/spymasters a reflection of the real life world of espionage?

[Peter Pedant]

yeah I think they say so somewhere

Cge men at the Foreign Office had its day after philby 1962

[Peter Pedant]

Stalin they say played down the importance of Burgess MacLean ( my old college) and philby ( son of the tray tray famous Arabist)

because he cdnt / wdnt believe that the English intelligentsia wd betray their own kind

You know that Mme Tchekova ( olga Nipper) turned up latterly in Hitler's entourage and was ffound to be a stalinist agent?

they llived in different times

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Knipper

only up to 1905

oops there may be two

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Chekhova

[jno]

you'd best run a check over them, PP, to see which is the right one. Or maybe a Czech would be good.