MI5 and Me : A Coronet Among the Spooks

ISBN-13: 9781408888131 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 256 str.

Charlotte Bingham

Opis

'A Jilly Cooper heroine in a John le Carré world' (Libby Purves, TLS); a beguiling comic memoir about a young woman who discovers her father is a spy (and was the model for John le Carré's George Smiley) and goes to work as a secretary in 1950s MI5Much to her surprise, eighteen-year-old Lottie has just found out that her aloof, rather unexciting father is a spy. And now he's decreed that she must make herself useful and get a Proper Job - so she's packed off to MI5 herself, trussed up in a dreary suit. Luckily her delightful colleague Arabella is on hand to enliven the torments of typing and decode the enigmas of office life. But as Lottie's home fills with actors doubling as spies, and Arabella's mother is besieged with mysterious telephone calls, the girls start to feel well and truly spooked.A hilarious true story, and a unique window into 1950s Britain - where Russian agents infiltrate the highest echelons, where debutantes are typists and where Englishness is both a nationality and a code of behaviour - MI5 and Me is a sparkling comic memoir.

Recenzje

An astonishing tale . She still has all the exuberant delight of a teenager in telling stories to make herself and other people laugh. Long may she write Lynn Barber Sunday Times

O autorze

Charlotte Bingham wrote her first book, Coronet Among the Weeds, a memoir of her life as a debutante, at the age of 19. It was published in 1963 and became an instant bestseller. Her father, John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris, was a member of MI5 where Charlotte Bingham worked as a secretary. He was an inspiration for John le Carré's character George Smiley. Charlotte Bingham went on to write thirty-three internationally bestselling novels and the memoir MI5 and Me. In partnership with her late husband Terence Brady, she wrote a number of successful, plays, films and TV series including Upstairs Downstairs and Take Three Girls. She lives in Somerset. charlottebingham.com