David McCloskey

What the CIA and MI6 really talk about

The Special Relationship has seen more special days. Earlier this year, President Trump delivered his verdict: ‘How is the relationship? It’s the relationship where, when we asked them for help, they were not there. When we needed them, they were not there. When we didn’t need them, they were not there. And they still aren’t there.’ Trump was referring to divisions between the US and UK over the wisdom and conduct of the war in Iran. (Even amid a spat, though, he can dish out praise. Just this week, following the arrest of five men outside RAF Fairford, used by American bombers to strike Iran, the President said the UK authorities had done an ‘amazing job’.) But his remarks landed at a moment of divergence in the US-UK relationship that extends well beyond Iran.

Pity the modern-day spy novelist

From our UK edition

I write spy thrillers that attempt to deal authentically with the world around us. The Syrian civil war. Spy games with Vladimir Putin. Russian meddling in the US. The shadow war between Israel and Iran. Tension inside the US-UK intelligence partnership. These are the settings for my first five novels, and in all of them fast moving and unexpected events in the real world have disrupted my plotlines, rendering portions of the books ‘OBE’, as we used to say back at Langley: overcome by events. The real world, more and more, is scooping the spy novelist. Exploding pagers? That would be too much. It would strain credulity Spy novels, of course, have always been in conversation with reality.