A Legacy of Spies and Red Notice

A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarré

For fans of "The Spy Who Came in From The Cold", and arch spymaster, George Smiley, this is a return to familiar and much-loved territory. We are again plunged into a world where our intelligence is stretched to the limit by crpytic jargon, non-linear narrative, and jigsaw pieces of truth that scatter as soon as we begin to piece them together. It is modern day and children of victims of "Windfall", a failed covert operation from cold-ward days, intend to sue the British intelligence services for the deaths of their parents. The fall guy is Peter Guillam who is called back from his retirement on a Breton farm and subject to interrogation. All the past files, including those kept by the Stasi, are put before Guillam and Le LeCarré uses this novel as a re-run of "The Spy..." and the hunt for the traitor in British intelligence. It's a very good, page-turning read but, to me does not have a good ending.

Red Notice by Bill Browder

This is the second book about the corruption at the heart of the Russian state that I've read this year. Bill Browder tells the story of how he became involved in making money for investors by buying into new capitalist enterprises, first in Eastern Europe and then in Russia. Just like the first book, "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible" by Peter Pomerantsev, modern Russia is revealed as an alien world to those of us living under democratic systems. Although our society has many ills, we are nowhere near the state controlled gangsterism, corruption of the police and judiciary, or state control of the media and electoral system that prevail in Russia.

The tragic heart of this book is a young Russian lawyer, Sergie Magnitsky, who was beaten to death by eight Russian police officers after exposing the theft of $230 million of taxes by Russian government officials. Eventually this led to the USA passing a Magnitsky Law that enabled the seizing of assets of Russian criminal oligarchs who are using the West to launder the millions made from their nefarious enterprises.

As Lee Child says on the cover of the book, "Reads like a classic thriller..", and I read it it in 5 days.

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The Shortest History of Germany by James Hawes

Being woefully ignorant of the history of every country but my own I thought I should read this history of Germany particularly as it claims to be the shortest.

The author takes the dividing line of the River Elbe as the fixed point of German history, from the Romans through to the present day. During the centuries this line represented in turn, the separation of the power of Rome in the West from the Slavic hordes in the East, the Catholic West & South from the Protestant East and the nationalism and militarism of Prussia in the East from the democracies to the West

UK children find understanding history tricky, or perhaps boring, but at least the sea is a fixed border and the reigns of Kings and Queens, and the lives of major figures help fix the chronology, so pity then German children faced with shifting borders, 3-way power struggles between The Emperor, The Electors (not electorate!) and the Pope. Add to the mix the changing alliances and aggression from all the neighbours and you could forgive any German child from throwing in the towel. Do not despair. This book picks its way at great speed through the mess and brings order to the chaos. Above all it makes one realise yet again how the ordinary lives of the hoi polloi (you and me) meant almost nothing to the rulers and the rich. The book is full of helpful, simple equations, such as:

Theory: radical belief in change through conflict + Practice: worship of state power = The perfect philosophy for extremists of both left and right.

At the end of WWII when Germany was partitioned along, yes, you've guessed it, the line of the Elbe, the map looked uncannily like the map of 814CE, at the death of Charlemagne.

I've no idea what a historian would make of this book, though the author studied German at Hertford College, Oxford and UCL, and held lectureships in German, but for this ignorant layman it helped fill in some of the yawning gaps in his knowledge, and it was a quick, easy read. It was also an important reminder that my UK-centric view of history creates a distorting lens which should be cast aside to let us see more clearly the mass of humanity beyond our shores as individuals engaged in the same ups and downs of life as me, rather than foreign nationals who want a slice of my cake.

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