Material Witness

REVIEW: The Firefly series by Henry Porter

Henry Porter’s Firefly trilogy of spy novels begins in Syria with the flight of a young boy and his family from the brutal and repressive ISIS regime that wins control of his village, replacing the brutal and repressive government regime.

Across the three novels, the story travels with Naji and Paul Samson, the former MI6 agent sent to find him, through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, London, Germany, Washington DC, the Baltics and many other places besides.

As the plot deepens and develops, what Porter reveals is the interconnectedness not just of nation states but of all of the major story arcs you can currently see daily in the news: the refugee crisis; the rise of the populist right; the use of data to manipulate voting patterns; the assault on democracy; the post Cold War ambitions of Putin´s Russia.

Porter is a past master of the spy novel, with his end-of-Cold-War series featuring MI6 agent Robert Harland (who makes a reappearance here) bringing to life espionage in the 1980s. Here his canvass illustrates a new landscape, which with careful analysis proves itself to be not so dissimilar to the old. Information is still power and good tradecraft still the hallmarks of the spooks but where the key tools have changed to mobile phones, drones, artificial intelligence and processing power.

There is still space for an exciting car chase across borders, for action in remote locations, for daring rescues and wild shoot outs. And it is the combination of elements – skillfully built character arcs, tension and pace in the narrative and the topicality and power of the issues addressed – that makes these novels so powerful and compelling.

I devoured all three in less than three weeks. We are blessed at present to have a fine cadre of British spy writers from which to choose, and Porter stands with the best.

REVIEW: Slow Horses on Apple TV

There is a moment in Real Tigers, the third of Mick Herron's Slough House novels, that almost perfectly encapsulates the awfulness of Jackson Lamb. 

With his team of misfits in action, Lamb needs a ride to the scene and has only his socially awkward tech genius Roddy Ho around to help. Lamb orders Ho to go and get his car, and in doing so tells him: "chop chop". 

As Ho disappears down the stairs of Slough House, Lamb calls after him: ‘Oh, and when I say “chop chop”, I hope you don’t think I’m being racially insensitive?’ ‘No'. ‘Only you Chinks can be pretty thin-skinned.’

From the first time they encountered Lamb and his team of MI5 rejects, most dedicated Slough House readers will have asked themselves the question: "How can they ever bring this to screen?"

Because Lamb is everything that modern cultural norms cannot tolerate: a cruel bully whose discourse with his inferiors - and more or less everyone else - wonders into racist and misogynist stereotypes that were all the rage in the 1970s but not so much now.

So for the producers of this sharp and dark anti-spy thriller any chance of success meant getting one critical element right: the portrayal of Jackson Lamb.

With the casting of Gary Oldman, they took a huge step in the right direction. With his disheveled, gone-to-seed air and a demeanour dripping with disdain and loathing, Oldman looks and sounds the part.

Just as much as the actor's consummate skill, the writing delivers the perfect Jackson Lamb for television. While the appalling personal hygiene, the acerbic and cruel wit and the general awfulness are there, the awfulness is contained on just the right side of the acceptability line. And, critically, he is very funny.

And as a huge admirer of Herron and his books, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and settled in to enjoy the ride.

Slow Horses is everything I hoped for. It is well-paced and beautifully crafted with high production values. The script and performances crackle with the spirit of crushing disappointment and even more crushing hope that makes  the books so successful.

Jack Lowden's River Cartwright bristles with the unfairness of his lost career as he itches for one more chance. Saskia Reeves is not what I imagined for the buttoned-up recovering alcoholic Catherine Standish but is all the better for it in a performance that matches Lamb's disdain with naked disgust.

And then there is the anti-Lamb: the imperious Diana Taverner, second desk at MI5. This is a role Kristin Scott-Thomas was born for her. Her icy countenance and clipped vowels deliver all of Lady Di's colossal self-belief, ambition and sly manipulativeness.

The combination is incredibly compelling and tied to Herron's simple but tense plot of radicalized white nationalists Apple, damn them, are releasing new episodes weekly.

The first two were fabulous, and I´m looking forward to more.