MI5 and Me: 'Imagine a Jilly Cooper heroine in an early John le Carré world' - Hardcover

Bingham, Charlotte

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408888149 ISBN 13: 9781408888148

Verlag: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018

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Críticas

An astonishing tale . She still has all the exuberant delight of a teenager in telling stories to make herself and other people laugh. Long may she write (Lynn Barber Sunday Times)

Imagine a Jilly Cooper heroine in an early John le Carré world . It offers to our over-anxious age of Putin-dread, Corbynism and cybercrime an enthrallingly nostalgic portrait of a post-war Britain, an idyll where even the security services breathe a kind of sweet innocence (Libby Purves Times Literary Supplement)

A hilarious and candid account of her time at MI5: the shady characters her father invites home, and anecdotes of office life both absurd yet believable. Filled with period detail, Bingham's memoir is entertaining and extraordinary (Hannah Beckerman Observer)

Much fun, brilliant, sly . The more cynical of us might expect treachery, backstabbing and boardroom power-grabs, but what Lottie finds is "good folk and true, working away in the defence of our lovely country, full of integrity, and so much fun". Given the charming, flighty narrative that results, it would be a hard-hearted reader who'd find fault with that (Spectator)

A stone-cold comic classic . Joyfully silly, with undercurrents of real danger (Tatler)

Sparky and larky . Amusing (Lucy Hughes-Hallett Guardian)

I had underestimated Charlotte Bingham's capacity to write light-heartedly-and indeed, hilariously . In her book, one funny story follows another . You will be sure to find this book a most entertaining and enjoyable read (Country Life)

Reseña del editor

'A Jilly Cooper heroine in a John le Carré world' (Libby Purves, TLS); a beguiling comic memoir about a young woman who discovers her father is a spy (and was the model for John le Carré's George Smiley) and goes to work as a secretary in 1950s MI5

It seems to me now that everyone who came to our house in those days was a spy.

When Lottie is summoned to her father's office at the age of eighteen, she is astonished to learn that this aloof, unexciting parent is a spy. Even more perturbing is his view that she should stop drifting around and get a proper job, something patriotic and worthwhile.

So Lottie finds herself outside MI5's Mayfair headquarters in a dreary suit, feeling naked without her false eyelashes. Miserably assigned to the formidable Dragon, Lottie longs to escape, or for anything to release her from the torment of typing. Thankfully the serene Arabella is on hand to decode the enigmas of office life - from the strange disappearance of some security films to the career-transforming properties of garlic. But as Lottie's home fills with actors doubling as spies, and Arabella's mother is besieged by fishy telephone calls, Lottie begins to feel well and truly spooked.

This unique memoir is a window into 1950s Britain: a country where Russian agents infiltrate the highest echelons, where debutantes are typists and where Englishness is both a nationality and a code of behaviour. Discretion and honour meet secrecy and suspicion in this enchanting, extraordinary and hilarious true story.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1408888149
• ISBN 13: 9781408888148
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256