Dave’s Comments (group member since Feb 25, 2013)

Dave’s comments from the Espionage Aficionados group.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I think it was my senior year in high school; it was my mother’s book club selection. She wasn’t impressed, but I was blown away. It certainly impacted the way I saw the world.

I probably don’t have any business posting here as I’ve been away from the group for a long time but I remember reading, and enjoying, The Company of Saints by Evelyn Anthony. It approaches the espionage genre from a woman’s perspective. It’s not in the LeCarre caliber, but doesn’t miss by far.

The biography I referenced is John LeCarre: the Biography, Adam Sisman. Ronnie figures prominently. Here’s a article addressing that volume and LeCarre’s autobiography: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

You read about 50% more than I had before I bailed out. My reason for beginning was the same as yours, and Sisman did help in that regard. I probably put it back on the shelf because something else caught my attention. I don’t necessarily have to like an individual to enjoy/appreciate his bio. In my case the problem was more my gnat-sized attention span. Your post reminds me that it’s still sitting there waiting for me.

I may get back to it soon. For me, besides enriching appreciation for LeCarre’s work, the book has value as social history of certain UK classes and the espionage community in general.

Michael, thanks for the review. I also enjoyed the mini-series. I started the novel shortly after it came out, but I accidentally left it in a hotel room when I was about 25% into it. I never got back to the book, and was grateful for the tv series.

I thought Cairo Affair was vey good.

Bingo! Hitler's Spy Chief: The William Canaris Mystery.

Gehlen? Very good guess, but no cigar. It wouldn't technically be Googling to look at my recent reading lists if you're so inclined. I haven't updated my "currently reading" list for quite a while, but I suspect the name would jump out at you.

I read Gehlen's autobiography many years ago (pre-kindle; but well after Gutenberg, despite what my offspring might say). Seeing his name again reminds me that his survival and ultimate success was a function of his falling into Western hands with detailed knowledge of, and a major agent network in, the USSR. The guy I'm thinking of didn't survive the war, but if he did and was in Western custody, I wonder if he would have been shot "while attempting to escape".

This is from nonfiction lit: "Here was a spymaster who believed that a total victory for Nazi Germany would spell disaster for the world and that a balancing act of supreme dexterity would somehow enable him to help his opponents while at the same time saving his country from the jaws of utter ruin." I'll be satisfied if you identify the subject spymaster.

Jim, LeCarre's TTSS? I don't remember the line from the book, but I interviewed a lawyer who had the quote on his desk.

You do it Feliks, I'm not the creative sort.

The Conversation.

Quite an iconoclast. The Gore Vidal of fin de siecle Paris.

Nooilforpacifists, I believe the theme music goes some way toward resolving concerns regarding the differences between the personal quality of the fictional Sydney Reilly as he appears in the 1st, 2nd and final third of Ace of Spies. At first he's out to make a fortune. Then, with the Bolsheviks grasping at power, he senses that an empire may be his to win. Finally, he senses that he is beaten, can't avoid the inevitable.

Shostakovich's sweet/sad music stresses the fleeting nature of happiness. We hear its beautiful melancholy when he successfully facilitates the Japanese attack on Port Arthur, when he plots with Savinkov to overthrow the Bolsheviks, and when he faces the Trust head on. There's always the beauty and the sadness; the successes and the foreshadowing of the ultimate failure.

I've read, also on Wikipedia, that Shostakovich's inspiration for the Romance was the Meditation from Massenet's Thais. I'm not sure about that, but they are remarkably similar. That is significant to readers of Anatole France's Thais. In that novel, a very holy, very ascetic hermit living in the Egyptian desert goes to the metropolis to convert a famously beautiful and worldly courtesan to the ascetic life. Of course he's successful, but he falls into a very lustful sort of love with the courtesan, Thais who is now too holy to have him. His very success condemned him to failure

Like the monk, Sydney Reilly can't foresee what will happen, but he can't help but make efforts, ones that are destined to fail. (Or maybe he's Don Quixote jousting with windmills, I hadn't thought before.) As Feliks suggests there was never a chance in hell that a Jew with an Irish name would ever be Czar.

So much for the fictional character, heaven alone knows what was going on with the real Sydney Reilly, or whatever his name was.

One more comment. At least one other member has noted Shostakovich's enchanting theme music. It is the Romance from The Gadfly Suite. The following lines from Wikipedia's Gadfly article suggests how it happened to be chosen by the mini-series' producers:

"According to historian Robin Bruce Lockhart, Sidney Reilly – a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service – met Ethel Voynich in London in 1895. Ethel Voynich was a significant figure not only on the late Victorian literary scene but also in Russian émigré circles. Lockhart claims that Reilly and Voynich had a sexual liaison and voyaged to Italy together. During this scenic tarriance, Reilly apparently "bared his soul to his mistress," and revealed to her the story of his strange youth in Russia. After their brief affair had concluded, Voynich published in 1897 her critically acclaimed novel, The Gadfly, the central character of which, Arthur Burton, was allegedly based on Sidney Reilly's own early life.[2] However, Andrew Cook, a noted biographer of Reilly, calls Lockhart's romanticised version of such events doubtful, and counters instead that Reilly was perhaps informing on Voynich's radical, pro-émigré activities to William Melville of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch.[3]"

Everything about SR is a mystery.

Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart was active in Revolutionary Russia on behalf of the UK. His memoirs, British Agent, (available for online reading at http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/BritAgen...) addresses that period Part 4. I thought it was fascinating reading. He addresses Reilly and many other characters in the mini-series. In a particularly interesting passage he describes accompanying Dzerzhinsky (the other Feliks) on a raid against a group of Anarchists.

Let me try one more time...https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Sorry, I reviewed and highly recommend, Spies of Jerusalem by Colin Smith.

I reviewed, and highly recommend, Sp

Thanks for the nonfiction version of SR's courtship. I've been a fan of Reilly, Ace of Spies for 15 years or so (athough I only came across the prequel, set in Baku last winter). I like to think I'm not too gullible, and never mistook the series for nonfiction. But the difference between R,AoS and the story you recount is a good bit greater than I would have imagined.

I see on Wlkipedia that the series is based on the book by the son of "Robbie" Lockhart. I remember reading in the senior Lockhart's autobiographical British Agent that he didn't have a very high opinion of SR.

I like all aspects of R,AoS, but I have to single out the theme music for special praise. It served as my introduction to Shostakovich.