ABSTRACT
Literature is a lie which seeks to tell a truth. Espionage is a trade dependent on deceit. Where the two professions meet, the dissembling knows no limit. As David Cornwell, the non-de-plume of John le Carré, has written: ‘I’m a liar, born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as a novelist’ (Kerridge, 2015).
