In the history of literature, spy novels occupy a special place. Appearing late in the landscape (the first fiction featuring a secret agent dates from 1821, it is signed Fenimore Cooper), works describing the world of intelligence have often been written by former professionals in the sector. Proof ? The journey of these ten writers who belonged to different “agencies” before turning to letters.
John Buchan (1875-1940), inventor of the propaganda thriller
Author of a classic of the genre, The 39 Steps, adapted by Alfred Hitchcock for the cinema, this contemporary of Maurice Leblanc had an incredible destiny. A lawyer by training, a long-time lawyer at the London bar (some claim that this was only a cover), John Buchan has published around thirty books largely nourished by his military experience … acquired in particular during the Boer War, in Africa of the South from 1901 to 1903. Convinced that literature could be a weapon, he created a cell responsible for publishing anti-German novels during the First World War. He recruited a dozen renowned writers, including G.K. Chesterton, Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Hope and H.G. Wells. He himself put down in writing the exploits of an agent of the Intelligence Service, Edmund Ironside, who became on paper the “spy catcher” Richard Hannay, an ace of counterintelligence. In recognition of his services, John Buchan was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1935.
William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), special envoy to Moscow
The son of a diplomat, born in France, where he spent the first ten years of his life before joining England the day after his father’s death, Somerset Maugham bequeathed to us a bewitching body of work made up of some twenty novels and nearly of 120 short stories. After starting a career as a doctor in London, he turned to writing and traveled the world. The globe-trotting writer takes advantage of his travels to carry out missions for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). A polyglot, he is fluent in French and German; his talent for observation renders eminent service to the British agency. Especially in Russia, where his reports, made on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution, allow intelligence to anticipate the fall of the tsarist regime. From this experience the writer will draw, in 1928, the thrilling Mr Ashenden, secret agent.
Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958), on the European front
Prior to the creation of the CIA in the aftermath of World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) regularly used reporters for spy missions. Mary Roberts Rinehart is one of his recruits. After having been a nurse, the young woman published in 1906 a successful detective novel, The Man in Lower Ten (untranslated), followed in 1907 by her second book, L’Escalier en colimaçon (“The Circular Starcase”), adapted to the theater. The young woman also writes articles for The Saturday Evening Post. This title sends him to Europe at the outbreak of the First World War. The journalist, who hides a trench periscope in her sleeve, will collect valuable information on the Franco-German front, even going so far as to extract secrets from the King of the Belgians under the pretext of an interview.
Pierre Nord (1900-1985), a scribe in the Second Office
A somewhat forgotten figure in publishing, André Brouillard, better known by the pseudonym of Pierre Nord (in reference to his department of birth) has published more than 70 station novels, almost all tinged with espionage. A universe that this native of Cateau-Cambresis, in Hauts-de-France, discovered as a teenager. During the First World War, the boy joined the so-called “White Lady” intelligence network, responsible for reporting the movements of German military trains to the Allies. Unmasked in 1916, his young age earned him the death sentence. After the war, having become a Saint-Cyrian, he began a military career in 1922 in the tanks, before joining the Second Bureau, a service responsible for collecting and analyzing intelligence.
Ian Fleming (1908-1964), agent 17F
Is it any wonder? The creator of James Bond was also a secret agent. After passing through Eton College, a breeding ground for MI6… he was recruited in 1939 by Rear Admiral John Godfrey. Within the Royal Navy’s military intelligence cell (Department of Naval Intelligence, DNI), he became agent “17F. His role during World War II was to plot the routes of Nazi submarines. Promoted lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), Ian Fleming translated from German (and French) the interceptions made by the British “big ears” while his brother, Peter, multiplied the field missions within of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). One of Ian Fleming’s greatest successes was Operation Mincemeat, which aimed to distract the German General Staff into believing that the Allies were planning a landing in the Balkans, in 1944. To do this, he imagines stranding a corpse on the Spanish coast, in the pockets of which false invasion plans have been slipped. The success of this mission will be worth to Ian Fleming to be promoted to commander.
Marthe McKenna (1892-1966), the London eye
Born in Flanders, the Belgian Marthe Cnockaert was recruited at the beginning of the First World War by the British services under the code name “Laura”. First a waitress in her parents’ cafe, before becoming a nurse in a German hospital, she gleans valuable information, which she transmits on Sundays during mass to her attendant. In 1915, she recruited a market gardener (code name “Canteen Ma”) and a postman, “Number 63”, who informed her of troop movements in the area. But a priest, employed by the Germans, had her arrested in 1916 after the failure of an attempt to sabotage an enemy ammunition warehouse. Sentenced to death, she will be pardoned in extremis. Marthe would publish her Memoirs under her married name (she married John McKenna after the Armistice). Memories of a Spy (1932) will be prefaced by Winston Churchill.
Graham Greene (1904-1991), l’ami de Kim Philby
Nothing like the status of travel writer as a cover. Recruited straight out of Oxford by Kim Philby – later revealed to be a KGB agent – Graham Greene worked for Britain’s Intelligence Service over a wide area encompassing the Congo Basin, Liberia, Haiti and Mexico. Based in Sierra Leone during the Second World War – where he became friends with another agent who would become a writer, John le Carré – he multiplied intelligence missions as far as Cuba. The success of his novels, however, will lead him to take the field with MI6. His memories will largely nourish his work. In Our agent in Havana (1958), he recounts, in the guise of a fiction, some of the missions he led in the Caribbean before Fidel Castro came to power.
Roald Dahl (1916–1990), Honorable Washington Correspondent
Who would’ve believed that ? The creator of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also a spy. Former Royal Air Force pilot, wounded in action in 1940 during a mission between Egypt and Libya, Roald Dahl was recruited by MI6 in 1942, during his stay in the United States, by the British Security Coordination (BSC), a structure that officially facilitated dialogue between London and Washington. In this context, the future novelist draws up detailed accounts of his exchanges with the senior officials he frequents in the American capital. Close to Vice-President Henry Wallace, with whom he plays tennis, Dahl even manages to approach Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He thus passed on to Winston Churchill the inflections of the White House in matters of foreign policy. According to Donald Sturrock, his biographer, the novelist will push his professionalism to the point of putting a congresswoman (Clare Boothe Luce), who is also the wife of the owner of Time and Life magazines, into his bed to convince her of the necessity of the intervention. United States military in Europe.
Gérard de Villiers (1929-2013), documentalist of the SDECE
The inventor of the SAS series maintained close ties with the External Documentation and Counterintelligence Service (SDECE), the ancestor of the DGSE. General Philippe Rondot spilled the beans a few days after the death of Gérard de Villiers, on October 31, 2013. It was Rondot who, in the 1960s, introduced the writer to Colonel Ivan de Lignières, a member like him of the service Stock. The general said that the former journalist had been useful to him in his positions as adviser to the director of the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST) and adviser for intelligence and special operations (CROS) to the Minister of Defense. “He helped me quite effectively. Through his contacts, his understanding of situations, his precise descriptions of different terrains, he avoided me some pitfalls and some hazardous encounters, “the former officer told Le Point. Before adding that Gérard de Villiers was regularly “debriefed” by other intelligence agents on his return from his many trips.
John le Carré (1931-2020), the mole who almost crossed over to the East
He invented a fearless antihero character: George Smiley. And made him the protagonist of nine spy novels describing with rare realism the sticky daily life of Western intelligence agents tracking down Eastern moles. Author of the classic The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré, real name David Cornwell, worked for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) during the worst hours of the Cold War. Based in Germany, he revealed, at the end of his life, to have been tempted to switch and put himself at the service of the KGB… Not so much by ideology as by a desire to understand the springs of his Russian alter egos. In 1963, John le Carré officially left the ranks of MI6 after Kim Philby revealed his cover to Moscow.
