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Spymasters.The.Great.Spy.Writers.S01E01
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00:12The truism that James Bond is entertainment, divorced from the real world of espionage,
00:19may not, in fact, be true.
00:23The worlds of spy film, spy phenomena, spy books, spy fiction and real spies are increasingly
00:31part of a digitally interconnected world.
00:35Appearance and reality both conflict and merge.
00:45Assassinations have been a part of Statecraft toolkit, if you will.
00:50When you watch a spy film, you as a spectator might experience conflictual pleasure to see
00:58people doing the sort of things that you're not ready to do.
01:03I don't know!
01:05We don't need to have a female James Bond because we actually had real female agents out there.
01:11Who do you think I am, Sam?
01:12I don't think you can understand John McCary without understanding the childhood of David
01:16port.
01:18Ukraine's bond and Q-like ability to make brilliantly conceived gadgets changed the nature of defence,
01:26more effective than billion pound aircraft carriers and big armies.
01:32The worlds of appearance and reality, of public and private, are merging.
01:44You only live twice, once when you're born, and once when you look death in the face.
02:21There is an almost unquestioning acceptance and identification with the world of spying
02:27and spy masters.
02:28With its familiar conventions and images.
02:36Lying behind recurring plots, based on the successful negotiation of risk and betrayal,
02:44is an altogether bleaker world, based on violence and incessant surveillance by state actors
02:52to benefit state activities.
02:58The dominant emotion of the spy is fear.
03:02He or she acts alone.
03:05Spies and spy thrillers are set in a geopolitical world, based on secret state activities.
03:15There is usually a distinction made by spy writers, based on the difference in ethics between
03:22western spies and spies representing Russia.
03:26Russia.
03:29Traditionally, spies from the west are given some form of ethical code, derived from that of
03:35the state which they are representing.
03:37history.
03:39Though this code is often tested and sometimes broken.
03:46No such ethical code is identified in relation to spies from Russia and the eastern bloc in the cold war.
03:56There are secrets in the reception of spy books and films.
04:01And secrets in the murky worlds represented.
04:05The delusional obfuscation seems to operate, preventing any full or truer history being exposed in the times inhabited by the
04:16spies and spy stories themselves.
04:21The popularity of spy thrillers is immense.
04:27Successful film and television franchises have been built around spies, while spy novels sell in great numbers.
04:44The big question about intelligence is how did it all begin?
04:49Well, the Bible's version is perfectly straightforward.
04:53It all began with God.
04:55And God is the first major figure in world literature to emphasize the absolute requirement for good intelligence.
05:05The point at which it all begins is when, according to the Bible, God tells the children of Israel, and
05:13specifically Moses,
05:15to send out spies to spy out the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel.
05:23Intelligence agencies and intelligence officers do all sorts of things.
05:26They try to change facts on the ground.
05:28They can spread disinformation.
05:30They can conduct assassinations.
05:33They can conduct sabotage operations.
05:36But they also try to protect themselves and their governments.
05:39So they counter other states' intelligence and security services.
05:44So conduct counterintelligence.
05:46And they also try to weed out any moles who might be in government, who might be reporting to adversarial
05:52states about what you're planning and what your capability is.
05:56So what's going on right now in the United Kingdom is that foreign and hostile intelligence services are looking to
06:02steal our secrets.
06:03They're looking to understand more about who we are in the United Kingdom, what our strengths, what our weaknesses are.
06:09So there's a counterintelligence function that we now have in the UK.
06:12We need to protect sensitive information about our critical infrastructure, our nuclear weapons, our diplomatic relations.
06:18But then we also need to recognize that our adversaries, hostile intelligence agencies, are looking to influence stuff going on
06:27in the United Kingdom.
06:28Particularly for Russian influence operations today, you can play on an anti-colonial, anti-British, anti-American feeling and portray
06:38events post-1945 in an anti-Western light.
06:42We have evidence that US presidential elections in 2016, but also in 2020, the Brexit referendum in 2016, the Russians
06:51in particular were looking to sort of sway the public vote in a direction that was palatable to them.
06:57Britain's ability on the global stage to express itself is underpinned by intelligence.
07:05Particularly when it comes to the transatlantic special relationship, there are two areas, I think, where Britain stands out.
07:13The nuclear issue, but also that intelligence angle.
07:17Britain has a global intelligence reach.
07:21It is able to use its informal contacts, supported by intelligence, to underpin its diplomatic value on the global stage.
07:30So you might, you know, read newspapers on a day-to-day basis, but actually this is just one layer
07:38of the reality we all live in.
07:40And actually, intelligence is about finding the different layers, going beyond this surface reality that we all inhabit, and having
07:50the real story about what's happening.
07:52And one of the pleasure of reading a spinable, of watching a film, is having this impression that not only
08:01you have access to this hidden reality, but also this secret reality.
08:08When it comes to thinking about cultural depiction of intelligence, there is always the focus on the novel, whether that's
08:16Len Dayton, whether that's Frederick Forsythe, whether that's Le Carre.
08:21And I think that sometimes, you know, we overemphasise the importance of the novel in shaping popular perceptions of intelligence.
08:31Because I think that when it comes to the mode that people get spy drama, spy depictions through, it's often
08:40through film and television.
08:46More people watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the TV dramatisation, than read the book.
08:54Espionage as a fictional genre has a long history.
08:59We could trace it back to the Tudor court, where there was an enormous emphasis on the spy network.
09:08The connection between literature and spying is an old one.
09:13But it becomes more prevalent, and perhaps more complex, as Britain's position, globally speaking, changed as the Empire developed and
09:26then began to decline.
09:29The biggest gap in British history, as written by British historians, is extremely easy to identify.
09:35It's intelligence. And why is it left out? Not because it's not important, but because the records aren't there.
09:43And the reasons that we can't get hold of the records is that they're owned by the government, and the
09:49government hasn't let them out.
09:50It's quite extraordinary, for example, that even the British Foreign Intelligence Service, MI6, it wasn't officially admitted by the government
10:02to exist until 1993, at the opening of the new parliament.
10:13It's a living, she said. It's not a real living, all this spying.
10:21Spying on what? Secret agents discovering what everybody knows already? Or just making it up, she said.
10:30She stopped short, and she went on without a change of voice.
10:36There are lots of other jobs that aren't real.
10:39Designing a new plastic soapbox.
10:42Making poker work jokes for public houses.
10:46Writing advertising slogans.
10:49Being an MP.
10:51Talking to UNESCO conferences.
10:54But the money's real.
10:55What happens after work is real.
11:03You could sensibly begin to trace that change in terms of the central current of literary development back to Rudyard
11:12Kipling with Kim, published in 1901,
11:17where the hero, Kimball O'Hara, was an orphaned Irish boy who takes on the work of a spy.
11:30During what Kipling terms, and he invented the term, the great game.
11:36The struggle between Britain and Russia for influence in Central Asia.
11:43I had heard many tales of espionage before, but none of them had quite the flavour of the one that
11:51now presented itself to me.
11:54In the streets of Lahore, amidst the bustling bazaars and swirling crowds, Kim met a man who spoke in riddles
12:03and had a story to tell.
12:08A story of nations and secrets.
12:12Of people whose very lives depended on knowledge passed from hand to hand.
12:19Kim was just a boy, but he could feel the weight of his role in a game far larger than
12:28he could understand.
12:31Kim Philby, Britain's most significant and dangerous spy and defector, was nicknamed after Kipling's Kim.
12:39Most CIA agents, it is said, kept a copy of Kim by their bedsides.
12:49Kim Philby, one of the famous Cambridge Five, so a group of five highly educated, well-heeled, well-connected English
12:58gentlemen who went to Cambridge University in the 1930s and who were recruited by the Soviets to spy for the
13:05Soviet Union.
13:07Most historians would agree that he was perhaps the one that caused the most damage to intelligence collection, caused the
13:13most damage to UK, US intelligence, special relations during the early Cold War period.
13:20He had friends in high places, just like Anthony Blunt had friends in high places who kept his treachery concealed.
13:29His nickname through the wards was little friend of all the world, and very often being lithe and inconspicuous.
13:41He executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops.
13:47For sleek and shiny young men of fashion, it was intrigue.
13:52Of course he knew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speak.
13:59But what he loved was the game for its own sake.
14:03The stealthy prowls through the dark gullies and lanes.
14:08The crawl up a water pipe.
14:11The sights and sounds of the women's world on the flat roofs.
14:15And the headlong flight from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark.
14:24The Cambridge Five's treachery led to immense intelligence transfers to Russia.
14:31Hugh Trevor Roper described their treachery as,
14:33their intention was to destroy Western civilization,
14:38which they held to be doomed and to replace it by Stalinist communism,
14:43which they supposed to be perfect, or at least perfectable.
14:47One of Philby's most significant actions, whilst at MI6,
14:51was to prevent the defection of Konstantin Volkov and his wife.
14:56Philby used his leading position in MI6 to get them sent back from Istanbul,
15:01back to be murdered in Russia.
15:04Incredibly, what Volkov was offering to the British Vice Consul in Istanbul
15:09was one of the greatest Cold War exposures ever of KGB intelligence.
15:15Information about 314 Soviet spies based in Turkey and 250 in Britain.
15:23Subsequent suspicion of Philby and the Cambridge Five
15:27led to deep distrust of MI6 and British intelligence generally by the CIA.
15:42The word most consistently used to describe Kim Philby was charm.
15:49That intoxicating, beguiling and occasionally lethal English quality.
15:54He was a man who regarded his opinions, however briefly adopted, as revealed truth.
16:02He never backed down, or listened, or compromised.
16:06He was equally swift to give and take offence,
16:09and ferociously critical of everyone except himself.
16:24It cannot be so very surprising that I adopted a communist viewpoint in the 1930s.
16:32So many of my contemporaries made the same choice.
16:36But many of those who made that choice in those days changed sides,
16:42when some of the worst features of Stalinism became apparent.
16:48Eyes stayed the course.
16:54We don't understand what the importance has been for a lot of our intelligence,
16:58because historians have been unable to write about it.
17:03Simply take the example of Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
17:07Just about everybody nowadays who takes even a slight interest in British operations during the Second World War
17:14knows that powers were enormously assisted by the fact that the codebreakers at Bletchley Park
17:21were breaking Hitler's and the Nazis' codes.
17:27There is a directness in the writing of those writers who had been spies,
17:32and in those who can imagine with their whole being what it would be like to know the isolation of
17:39being a spy,
17:41for a government, a state actor, with no actual government authority.
17:47Only the instruction to act on behalf of the state,
17:51or in the case of double agents,
17:54to act on behalf of two states,
17:56or no state other than a personal interest.
18:03These are terrifying terrors,
18:06known only unto God,
18:09known only unto MI6,
18:12the KGB,
18:14the CIA.
18:16This is a world only of consciousness,
18:21no place here for the unconscious,
18:23or the subconscious.
18:25Why?
18:27Why betray your own country?
18:30The evidence of the Cambridge spies was revulsion,
18:35an idealism for Soviet society,
18:37for communism.
18:52Good evening.
18:54Good evening.
18:55Good evening.
18:56I imagine that a man condemned to a long prison sentence feels much the same.
19:06I cannot remember what particular item in the routine of a boarding school roused this first act of rebellion.
19:17Loneliness?
19:19The struggle of conflicting loyalties?
19:21The sense of continuous grime?
19:25Or was it just then that I had suffered from what seemed to me a great betrayal?
19:33In the end, there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.
19:41At one level, the KGB, its operations in this country, in particular, was extremely successful.
19:49At another level, it was extremely unsuccessful.
19:52I mean, to be able to recruit five of the best intelligence officers ever recruited in Cambridge,
20:00the so-called Magnificent Five.
20:02Philby, Blunt, Cairncross, McLean.
20:05This is just extraordinary.
20:08And why did they do it?
20:09For practically no money.
20:12Mr. Philby, Mr. McMillan, the Foreign Secretary, said there was no evidence that you were the so-called third man
20:17who allegedly tipped off Burgess and McLean.
20:20Are you satisfied with that clearance that he gave you?
20:22Yes, I am.
20:23They did it because in the 1930s, many people, not everybody by any means,
20:29was looking for a great cause to work for.
20:33But the myth image of Stalin's Russia as the first society in modern history
20:42in which everybody, however humble, could make the most and the best of themselves.
20:48What do you think spies are? Priests, saints and martyrs?
20:53They're a squalid procession of vain fools.
20:56Traitors, too. Yes, pansies, sadists and drunkards.
21:02People who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.
21:11A man will like some of them and dislike others.
21:15Love of the country's culture.
21:17The men who know most of their country's cultures are usually the most intelligent and the least patriotic.
21:25Love of the country's government.
21:27But governments are usually disliked by the people they govern.
21:34The mission remains today as it was a hundred years ago to know your enemy.
21:39To know the capabilities of your enemy, but crucially to know the intentions of your enemy.
21:46We have humans, human intelligence, officers and agents overseas.
21:51But we now live in the digital age. This is the age of electronic surveillance.
21:56This is the age of eyes in the sky, satellites.
22:01This is the age of artificial intelligence now.
22:05Quantum computing potentially might be on the horizon.
22:11Some spy fiction does a great job at representing intelligence and how it works.
22:16Some less so.
22:24And I think oftentimes we see this tension between spy fiction wanting to put emphasis on drama.
22:31But actually the reality of the spionage is by piecing intelligence together, working in complicated teams.
22:40And this doesn't make great television.
22:429.45 a.m. Postal delivery.
22:45The postman was your man, Haggerty, delivered two packets in four letters.
22:519.56 a.m. The baker's van called, left two large brown and a sliced white.
22:56They had an extra pint of milk today, which either means that there are more people over there, or they
23:02are drinking more tea.
23:05And the second thing that I sometimes find complicated about spy fiction is that spy agencies are often depicted as
23:14omnipotent creatures.
23:16So as these agencies that see all and know all, in fact intelligence is actually quite ambiguous.
23:24Spy literature and films reflect and mirror the increasing interest in intelligence at the beginning of the 20th century.
23:33Erskine Childers and Joseph Conrad wrote powerful accounts of this new world.
23:38If you look at Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands, which is a very much more nationally focused story,
23:50really in part written as a warning about the rise of maritime power in Germany and the need to respond
24:00to that threat.
24:02You see how the concept of the spy overlaps with the adventure story.
24:13The wind howled across the waters, cutting through my coat like a knife.
24:18I could feel the chill in my bones, but the cold wasn't the worst part.
24:23The worst part was the sense of something moving beneath the surface, something vast and sinister.
24:31We weren't just sailing through the North Sea, we were sailing into something darker.
24:36I had known the stakes were high, but this, this was beyond what I could have imagined.
24:43The conspiracy that we had stumbled upon was no ordinary plot.
24:48It was the beginning of something much larger, something that could change the world.
24:54But we had no choice. There was no turning back now.
25:01But it also asks them to think about some issues surrounding national identity and touches on issues that are never
25:15entirely absent from any work within the genre around ethical questions.
25:22Do you realise that England has no defences at all facing Germany, no North Sea Fleet, and all her naval
25:29bases are in the south, Portsmouth, Chatham?
25:31Historical accident?
25:33Oh, quite. But now it's not France whom we have to guard against.
25:36Germany is growing stronger every single day, and very soon her navy will rival ours.
25:43What is the honourable thing? What is the loyal thing? The courageous thing?
25:49Even in this relatively straightforward celebration of the success of a spying mission in the Riddle of the Sands, we
25:58still get that question.
26:00But in his later years, Childers became quite a different figure, who had a different kind of influence on the
26:10development of tensions and conflicts between England and Ireland,
26:17and between a concept of imperial power and resistance to that power, and a man who, you might say, changed
26:28sides.
26:32He was in the business of destruction, a business that demanded its price.
26:38He understood its rules, but could not understand why the world was so cruel.
26:44As he stared at the morning sky, a bitter thought gripped him.
26:49What if in the end there was no purpose?
26:57So many years, Europe in labour had, through its pain, seen for an instant a new glory, and then had
27:05collapsed to welter again in the agonies of war and fear.
27:10Governments had risen and fallen. Men and women had worked, had starved, had made speeches, had fought, had been tortured,
27:19had died.
27:20Hope had come and gone. A fugitive in the scented bosom of illusion.
27:26Men had learned to sniff the heady dream stuff of the soul, and wait impassively, while the lathes turned the
27:33guns for their destruction.
27:39I think intelligence reduces the likelihood of war by error.
27:46The fact that we discovered that, A, the Russians didn't have any plan to launch a surprise attack on us
27:55in the course of the Cold War, but feared that we might do so.
27:59The fact that we knew they had paranoid tendencies was absolutely crucial in, for example, the early 1980s.
28:07So, you're less likely to make mistakes when you're playing poker, if you know the hands of the other person's
28:16card.
28:16You're less likely to make mistakes about what another power is up to, if you know what the other power
28:24is up to, rather than you simply get reduced to mere speculation.
28:28So, intelligence is not perfect, but a world in which the major powers do not have intelligence is enormously more
28:36dangerous than a world in which they do.
28:42John Buchan is an important writer.
28:49High tide.
28:5110.17pm.
28:55The admiralty man was looking at me, as if he thought I had gone mad.
29:03Don't you see it's a clue, I shouted.
29:06Scudder knew where those fellows led.
29:09He knew where they were going to leave the country, though he kept the name to himself.
29:16Tomorrow was the day, and it was some place where high tide was at 10.17pm.
29:2539 Steps was published in 1915.
29:29It was an adventure story.
29:32It involves thwarting the plans of spies who were stealing naval plans, thwarted by the intelligence of those who were
29:45in pursuit.
29:47I walked on in the fog, every step I took bringing me closer to the unknown.
29:54My heart was racing, the damp air chilling my bones, but I pressed on.
30:01I had no choice.
30:03The fate of the nation was at stake.
30:08John Buchan led an extraordinary life, ending as Governor General of Canada.
30:14He combined politics with writing a succession of very successful spy novels.
30:20Lloyd George from the War Cabinet made Buchan Director of Information in 1917, in charge of Britain's war propaganda.
30:28In 1918, Buchan became head of the new Department of Intelligence within the Ministry of Information.
30:35He said that the great offensives of the future would be psychological, and he thought the governments should get busy
30:42about it and prepare their defence.
30:45He considered that the most deadly weapon in the world was the power of mass persuasion.
30:50Most people know the 39 steps through Hitchcock's film adaptation in 1935.
31:02Well, there we are.
31:03It is a completely different story.
31:07It's a very good example of the way in which cinema transforms a spy narrative.
31:16Well, you've seen the man pass you in the last few minutes.
31:19This is the man you want, I think?
31:22When we first just know.
31:24He's way in here and told me his name was Hanny.
31:26Is your name Hanny?
31:27No.
31:27Are you coming in to tea, sir?
31:29I'll be right along.
31:40Come on.
31:41The original novel had much more to do with the sense of a nation under siege, which of course 1915
31:51was very much the case.
31:53Hitchcock is focusing on different human relations and is looking at the processes of concealment and of a changing relation
32:07with a hidden world from an entirely different perspective.
32:15Where is Scudder's book? I cried to Sir Walter.
32:19Quick, man.
32:20I remember something in it.
32:24He unlocked the door of a bureau and gave it to me.
32:28I found the place.
32:3139 steps, I read.
32:34And again.
32:3639 steps.
32:38I counted them.
32:41Alfred Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut.
32:44What I like in the 39 steps are the swift transitions.
32:49The rapidity of those transitions heightens the excitement.
32:52It takes a lot of work to get that kind of effect, but it's well worth the effort.
32:57You use one idea after another and eliminate anything that interferes with the swift pace.
33:07All around me, the sounds of London seemed muffled, as though the city itself were holding its breath, waiting for
33:16something to happen.
33:18I could feel the danger lurking at every corner, but I'd been trained for this.
33:25A man's courage is often measured by his ability to go on when he's afraid.
33:31And I was afraid.
33:34Bucken was a strong influence a long time before I undertook the 39 steps.
33:40I'm not concerned with plausibility.
33:42That's the easiest part of it, so why bother?
33:45If you're going to analyse everything in terms of plausibility or credibility, then no fiction script can stand up to
33:53that approach, and you wind up doing a documentary.
33:56The critic who talks to me about plausibility is a dull fellow.
34:02Bucken's novel was also to influence Hitchcock's North by North West.
34:07The most striking resemblance between the novel and North by North West is the aeroplane scene.
34:13Bucken's Hannay is fleeing over the Scottish moors in the 39 steps.
34:27.
34:41In the last year of his life as Governor-General of Canada, Bucken came to regret his great concern with
34:48the outside world.
34:49and wrote his final book, Sick Heart River,
34:53exploring the themes of death
34:54and a desire for personal redemption.
34:59I need a rest.
35:01I've been pretty busy all my days, and I'm tired.
35:05Dearest, I am sick, very sick in mind.
35:09I'm going away.
35:10When I'm cured, I will come back to you.
35:13All my love.
35:21Somerset Maughan's spy novel, Ashenden,
35:24had the benefit of its author being a real spy,
35:28being head of British intelligence in Moscow
35:31during the Russian Revolution.
35:34I had been in the business of espionage for years,
35:38but I'd never quite seen it like this before.
35:41The agents were like actors, each playing a part,
35:46each pretending to be something they were not.
35:52Eric Ambler influenced many spy writers,
35:56including Graham Greene,
35:59Ian Fleming,
36:01John le Carré,
36:03and Frederick Forsyth.
36:07John le Carré called Eric Ambler
36:10the well from which we have all drunk.
36:16Love of country.
36:18There's a curious phrase.
36:21Love of a particular patch of earth?
36:24Scarcely.
36:25Put a German down in a field in northern France,
36:28tell him that it's Hanover,
36:30and he cannot contradict you.
36:32Love of fellow countrymen?
36:34Surely not.
36:37Love of country, we see,
36:39is merely a sloppy mysticism
36:41based on ignorance and fear.
36:45Eric Ambler's recurring themes
36:47of having no country,
36:49of being stateless,
36:51haunt in their sense of loneliness
36:53and isolation.
36:56But it was useless to try to explain him
36:58in terms of good and evil.
37:01They were no more than Baroque abstractions,
37:04good business and bad business,
37:06or elements of the new theology.
37:10Dimitrios was not evil.
37:15He was logical and consistent.
37:18He was logical and consistent
37:20in the European jungle
37:22as the poison gas called lewisite
37:25and the shattered bodies of children killed
37:28in the bombardment of an open town.
37:32The logic, Beethoven's quartets
37:35and Einstein's physics
37:37had been replaced by that
37:39of the stock exchange yearbook
37:41and Hitler's Mein Kampf.
37:48SIGINT stands for
37:49Signals Intelligence.
37:51And what it means more broadly
37:53is the intelligence he derived
37:55from intercepting people's communications
37:58in all their immense variety.
38:01SIGINT was the great advantage
38:03that Britain had over Germany
38:06in both World War I and World War II.
38:10Broadly speaking,
38:11why we had such a great authority
38:13of the Germans.
38:15The trouble is that the reader,
38:18like the general public
38:19to which he belongs,
38:21in spite of all the evidence
38:22telling him that he shouldn't,
38:24wants to believe in his spies,
38:26which, come to think of it,
38:28is how we went to war in Iraq.
38:34Now, there was a period in the Second World War
38:37when we could break German coats
38:38and the Germans could break some of our coats,
38:41but not for terribly long.
38:43So, SIGINT was where the great advantage
38:47that Britain had over its enemies
38:49in both World Wars had derived.
38:52The other thing that is important,
38:54of course,
38:55is Churchill.
38:57There's never been a British politician,
39:00statesman up to that point,
39:02who understood the importance
39:03of SIGINT better than Churchill.
39:06What did Hitler think of it?
39:08Nothing.
39:10So they've got on one side
39:11of the First World War
39:12a world leader
39:13who understands SIGINT
39:15better than any world leader
39:16has ever understood SIGINT before.
39:19And Hitler can't be bothered with it.
39:24SIGINT, in all its varieties,
39:26is extremely important.
39:28What my suspicion,
39:29but it's only a suspicion about China,
39:31is that, you know,
39:33they have so many good scientists,
39:36so many good mathematicians,
39:37they must be extraordinarily good at it.
39:40But it's the leadership.
39:48In wartime,
39:50Winston Churchill wrote,
39:52Truth is so precious
39:54that she should always be attended
39:56by a bodyguard of lies.
39:59Adolf Hitler was to add,
40:01We are divided from England
40:03by a ditch 37 kilometres wide,
40:06and we're not even able
40:07to get to know
40:08what is happening there.
40:10Espionage was a high-risk activity
40:13during World War II.
40:15Unlike Hitler,
40:16Churchill knew a lot
40:18about what was happening in Germany.
40:22So that is why, for example,
40:24the leading British circus impresario owner
40:29of the interwar period
40:31and into the early Cold War
40:33was one of Britain's most successful spies.
40:37This is Cyril Bertram Bills.
40:39What made him so good?
40:41There were two things.
40:42One, that he was actually very good,
40:43but secondly,
40:45it would not even occur
40:47to foreigners.
40:49A circus owner
40:50could actually be Britain's best spy,
40:52which he was.
40:54And who began this idea
40:57of using people
40:58from the entertainment business?
41:01Which means that
41:03when Hitler does come to power,
41:05he's able to fly to Germany
41:07in his airplane,
41:08but he would always be able
41:09to fly over really interesting places,
41:12like, for example,
41:14the Messerschmitt factory.
41:18British intelligence
41:19had a remarkable role
41:21in attempting to persuade the Americans
41:23that Germany was going to threaten them
41:25as well as us,
41:27and therefore shouldn't work for Pearl Harper
41:29but should get involved now.
41:30There were two people
41:32who were chiefly involved in this.
41:34One is a household name,
41:35and he was hopeless,
41:36and the other is a name
41:38that is now entirely forgotten,
41:40and he was brilliant.
41:41The one who was absolutely hopeless
41:43was Noel Cowart.
41:46He actually said
41:48in his subsequent memoirs
41:49and other documents
41:50that he was so good at espionage
41:52that he could have made a career in it.
41:55Just a little problem.
41:57He couldn't keep a secret.
42:00Whereas the man
42:01whose name undeservedly
42:03has just been forgotten now
42:05was Eric Mashfitz.
42:07He becomes,
42:08in more than one occasion,
42:10before and after the Second World War,
42:12the head of BBC Light Entertainment.
42:15So that is wonderful cover.
42:18Amazingly,
42:19Eric Mashfitz, OBE,
42:22when additionally
42:22not being a spy
42:24or editing the Radio Times,
42:26wrote the screenplay
42:27to a number of films,
42:28receiving an Academy Award nomination
42:30for Goodbye, Mr. Chips,
42:32numerous musicals,
42:34and the unforgettable hit songs
42:36when Nightingale sang
42:37in Barclay Square
42:38and These Foolish Things.
42:40I had to write a song
42:41in 24 hours.
42:43It was Sunday morning.
42:44A title came to me
42:45over breakfast.
42:46My midday
42:47was telephoning the result
42:49to my composer,
42:50Jack Strachey.
42:51By six o'clock,
42:52he had a melody.
42:54Everything seemed all right,
42:55though Jack wasn't all that enthusiastic
42:56about the title.
42:59That title, by the way,
43:01was
43:01These Foolish Things.
43:04Mashfitz is so good
43:06at deceiving people
43:08that he's actually given
43:10his own mini-intelligence agency.
43:13So what did he do?
43:14He forged all kinds of documents
43:17indicating that Germany
43:19was only waiting
43:19to attack the United States.
43:22And this was passed on
43:23to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
43:26And he actually quoted it
43:29in one of his broadcasts
43:30to the American people
43:31only two months
43:33before Pearl Harbor.
43:34There were other
43:36British intelligence efforts
43:38to influence
43:38American public opinion.
43:40The Michael Powell
43:41and Emmerich Pressburger
43:43Oscar-winning film
43:4449th Parallel
43:45was largely paid for
43:47by the British government
43:48to persuade American audiences
43:50that the United States
43:52should enter the war.
43:53All of you as citizens
43:55can help to bring
43:56these men to justice.
43:59Remember,
44:00each one of these men
44:02has every reason
44:04to be afraid.
44:05Look closely
44:07at your neighbour.
44:11Corporal,
44:12where's your man?
44:19Trust is absolutely fundamental
44:22to all human relationships,
44:24whether within a family,
44:25within a locality,
44:28or between countries.
44:30And from the moment
44:31that you have made your powers,
44:34who obviously cannot be trusted,
44:36Russia is quite impossible
44:38to trust.
44:38And the only way
44:40that we will ever have,
44:41and it appeared to be coming in
44:43at the end of the Cold War,
44:44the only way
44:45that we will ever have
44:47a decent relationship
44:48with Russia
44:49is by being able
44:50to trust them.
45:20The Cold War
45:21You
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