Historical dictionary of British spy fiction

Any reader or film-goer who read or saw The Day of the Jackal will remember how life-like it seemed: spy stories like that show how close fact and fiction really are. The genre – spy fiction and spy thrillers – emerged and flourished because of this close association of fact and fiction: the very plausibility of plots against the government, conspiracies by the state against the individual, risks from terrorist cells, dangerous and mysterious groups of anarchists, splinter groups emerging from war and geo-politics all ensure that spy fiction remains popular and influential. Readers and film-goers are not the only...