Duncan Williamson: SpyCatcher wri.html

This is the book, published in 1987, that brought the phrase, to be conomical with the truth, to the fore front of the English language. This is the book that led to that pathetic trial in Australia as Margaret Thatcher's government tried to prevent its publication in the UK. Whatever the outcome of that ridiculous trial, Thatcher lost by the way, the book was published all over the world: it sold more than 2 million copies world wide and 400,000 of those in the USA alone.

I know a member of my family had a copy of the book here in the UK at around the time of the trial.

What about the book then? I enjoyed it! Wright started his life in the British secret service around the time of the second world war and his work seems to have epitomised the British way of working: in the words of BBC Prime, building web sites out of string. Make do and mend was the order of the day!

You might think I'm being unfair with the string analysis but Wright himself would agree with my analysis as what he was working on as a scientist really was new and leading edge work. The things he had to do were being invented on the fly by people like Peter Wright.

I think one of the aspects of the book that Thatcher might have been worried about was that he told us everything, warts and all. As far as I can tell, Wright told us a great number of stories in which he revealed a lot of operational detail that some agents could have said that they would rather had not been revealed. I can't say whether the names and events are reeal or disguised but if I had been involved in some of the stories he reveals, I might feel compromised. Having said that, the stories are old now: they were old in 1987 too!

I got half way through the book, or thereabouts, when I thought that Wright must either have perfect recall or access to detailed notes and diaries as he wrote with great certainty about events and people. He included facial expressions, raised eyebrows, amounts of alcohol consumed. He even revealed minute detail about experiments and the subversive work that he took part in. He named a very large number of names throughout the book.

I haven't checked but is this sort of thing the reason why being economical with the truth surfaced during the trial? As if Wright's memory was imperfect.

I think that if I were a scientific historian or technologist or even a communications expert, I would be interested in this book. Even though Wright describes technology that is very old, I think there is a lot of merit in studying the thought processes that Wright takes us through.

The naming of names is a fascination although I have to say that one has to be even older than me to remember or appreciate a lot of what Wright talks about. There are names in this book that mean nothing to me. Onthe other hand, Burgess, Philby and MacLean are well known to my generation. I knew about Anthony Blunt: the man who was unveiled as a spy long after the Burgesses of this world. I thought Blunt was caught and disgraced and sentenced according to law ... Wright paints a story of an arrogant and odious man who was far from brought to book as comprehensively as he ought to have been. When other spies have been tortured and/or shot or incarcerated for ever or at least labelled with the mark of Cain, Wright left me with the impression that Blunt felt he had the right to keep himself to himself and admitted little.

Lock the door and throw away the key springs to mind vis a vis Blunt. He is long dead, however, so immune from all of this now.

The conduit for a lot of our most famous spies was homosexuality and Cambridge University and Wright makes a lot of these aspects.

In this long and readable book, then, what sticks out most of all? Apart from Thatcher's stupid trial, that is. It's two names:

Roger Hollis and Harold Wilson

Roger Hollis was the head of MI5 for years and Wright and others drew the conclusion after a lot f paintstaking work that Hollis was a Soviet spy at least up until the time of his retirement. Wright takes us through a great number of pieces of evidence to try to convince us that Hollis really was the leak that scuppered a lot of the work and effors of MI5. The Russians always seemed to be one step ahead of us. In the end, Wright was told to back off by people other than Hollis although Wright did tell Hollis himself that he believed he knew that Hollis was the spy they were all looking for.

Harold Wilson was the British Prime minister a couple of times and Wright has shocked me with his revelations. I know that Wilson always claimed that the Isreali and South African security services were working against him and his administration. Wright told me for the first time that Wilson had long established links with the Soviet Union and visited there many times. Many years ago I asked a student of politics why he thought Wilson had resigned as suddenly as did and he replied, without one second's worth of hesitation, treason in the cabinet. Wright gives some support for that view: he has shocked me by suggesting with little equivication that Wilson was involved in some pro Soviet shenanigans and retired for the reason that he'd been rumbled.

Under the thirty year rule, cabinet papers relating to Wilson's retirement were released earlier this year and we were treated to the revelations that Wilson retired because of impending ill health: impending Alzheimer's disease or some such. Wilson did go ga ga but Wright has certainly sown the seeds for me. Don't forget that Wright was writing about this subject a lot nearer to the actual events that I am writing about this book now.

It's old and it's taken me 20 years to find and read the book but I am glad I have: it's a good story that is well told. It won't matter especially that you don't know all of the peoplehe's talking about ashe leaves few stones unturned!!!

There is even an Abingdon connection, through the Giuseppe Martelli case: see page 270 of the paper back version!