Tuesday, June 20
A little bit of literature | ||
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“‘It was at the end of his service in London that recruitment took place. I have said that he exposed himself to great dangers; in doing so he fell foul of the British Secret Police, and they issued a warrant for his arrest. Mundt, who had no diplomatic immunity (NATO Britain does not recognize our sovereignty), went into hiding. Ports were watched; his photograph and description were distributed throughout the British Isles. Yet after two days in hiding, Comrade Mundt took a taxi to London airport and flew to Berlin. ‘Brilliant,’ you will say, and so it was. With the whole of Britain‘s police force alerted, her roads, railways, shipping and air routes under constant surveillance, Comrade Mundt takes a plane from London airport. Brilliant indeed. Or perhaps you may feel, Comrades, with the advantage of hindsight, that Mundt’s escape from England was a little too brilliant, a little too easy, that without the connivance of the British authorities it would never have been possible at all!’ Another murmur, more spontaneous than the first, rose from the back of the room.” | ||
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Vocabulary build-up | ||
The idiomatic expression fall foul of something means “to break a rule or law, especially without intending to; to have a disagreement with someone.” | ||
The noun hindsight means “perception of the significance and nature of events after they have occurred; the ability to understand, after something has happened, what should have been done or what caused the event.” | ||
Comments | ||
George Orwell wrote that a creative writer can expect to remain at the top of his form for only about 15 years. John le Carré wrote espionage novels at a high level for nearly 60. John le Carré was born in 1931 and, since his first published book, in 1961, he wrote novels that came to define the twentieth century and beyond, especially until the end of the Cold War, when espionage was still vividly present in the lives of both Western and Eastern nations. He spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. During the 1950s and 1960s he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Even if you are largely immune to the appeal of spy stories and genre narratives, Mr. le Carré’s books delivered a sting. “The spy who came in from the cold” is John le Carre's third novel and the first to earn him international acclaim. In this classic he created a world unlike any previously experienced in suspense fiction. With unsurpassed knowledge cultivated on his years in British Intelligence, le Carre brings to light the shadowy dealings of international espionage in the tale of a British agent who longs to end his career but undertakes one final, bone-chilling assignment. | ||
* Disclaimer: yesterday we made a mistake in the definition of the adjective stateless. The correct text is the following: | ||
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