I've always wanted to be a spy, and frankly I'm a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've been a spy for almost all of my adult life - I don't like being in the spotlight.
I wasn't a spy. I'd have been spotted in five seconds. Yes, I was in intelligence, but that covered a multitude of things.
Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.
In my head, I think I'd make a perfect spy, but in reality, I don't think I'd fare very well.
I feel really lucky that I grew up pretending to be a spy for my whole childhood.
I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing.
I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.
I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself.
The British keep employing me, and that makes me like them. It also makes me think they're very intelligent.
I've known several spies who have wanted to become novelists. And novelists who became spies, of course.