My love of John Le Carré has given me a fascination for the early years of the security and intelligence services. The history is by turns head thumpingly annoying, serendipitous, awesome adventure tale, calamitous and inspiring.
My friend Tom pointed me to Dan Snow’s History Hit podcast on Maxwell Knight, the MI5 spymaster in the run-up to World War 2 and beyond. He’s interviewing his biographer, Henry Hemming. I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve read a lot around this topic but this gave you a real sense of the political climate in Britain in the twenties and thirties. After listening I can’t wait to read the book.
In times when the world seems insane, you can get a better sense of what is going on by looking to the past. This gives you that sense of perspective, even if it isn’t particularly comforting. Despite that it always inspiring to listen to intelligent people talking about their passions.