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The Spy's Bedside Book
A classic compendium of espionage stories penned by some of the greatest writers and most famous spies. With a new introduction by Stella Rimington, former head of MI5.
The foxhunter, the angler, the cricketer — each has had his own bedside book. Why not the spy? First published in 1957, The Spy’s Bedside Book provoked much interest and pleasure and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a hundred copies were bought by East German Intelligence. This classic anthology, beautifully repackaged as a small-format hardback, will enthrall readers once again with its tales of espionage from a bygone era, while also revealing a secret or two, such as how to hide messages in a boiled egg and why you should always put pepper in your vodka when in Russia.
Most of the great writers on spying and many practitioners are represented in these Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Belle Boyd, Ian Fleming and John Buchan, Walter Schellenberg and Major Andre, Sir Paul Dukes and Vladimir Petrov — and from the golden age of espionage, William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim. William Blake, D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Mann, all suspected of espionage in three great wars, are some of the unexpected figures.
The foxhunter, the angler, the cricketer — each has had his own bedside book. Why not the spy? First published in 1957, The Spy’s Bedside Book provoked much interest and pleasure and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a hundred copies were bought by East German Intelligence. This classic anthology, beautifully repackaged as a small-format hardback, will enthrall readers once again with its tales of espionage from a bygone era, while also revealing a secret or two, such as how to hide messages in a boiled egg and why you should always put pepper in your vodka when in Russia.
Most of the great writers on spying and many practitioners are represented in these Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Belle Boyd, Ian Fleming and John Buchan, Walter Schellenberg and Major Andre, Sir Paul Dukes and Vladimir Petrov — and from the golden age of espionage, William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim. William Blake, D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Mann, all suspected of espionage in three great wars, are some of the unexpected figures.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1957
54 people are currently reading
351 people want to read
About the author
Hugh Greene
26 books2 followersLibrarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, KCMG, OBE was educated at Berkhamsted and Merton College, University of Oxford and became a journalist. He served as Director-General of the BBC from 1960-1969. One of his brothers was the novelist and screenwriter Graham Greene, OM, CH (1904-1991) and together they collected and edited 'The Spy's Bedside Book' (1957).
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, KCMG, OBE was educated at Berkhamsted and Merton College, University of Oxford and became a journalist. He served as Director-General of the BBC from 1960-1969. One of his brothers was the novelist and screenwriter Graham Greene, OM, CH (1904-1991) and together they collected and edited 'The Spy's Bedside Book' (1957).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
October 15, 2016
This was a long read I guess because I had so many things going on and the fact it is a collection of very varying items.
The book is from the Folio Society and I must admit they are beautiful books to hold and own but sometimes you do get to see a few imperfections (more on that later)
The book is really a collection of articles, short stories and even excerpts from larger publications (for example from John Buchan to Ian Fleming). There is a real mix of subjects and stories here. The book is broken up in to chapters which follow a specific theme such as "Hazards of the profession" to "a gaggle of suspects" with the articles arranged to support or explain them.
So what of the book - its a modern reprint of the classic edition (now this is where the Folio Society come in to its own. They take the seminal edition of a classic book and reprint it as only they can do. They are both beautiful and high quality). Now here is the surprise, there is a printing error or must accurately a reference - there are two introductions, the first to this edition the second the original and there is a discrepancy between a date referenced. Now this would be a petty point to make however these books are not cheap and you would have thought in the reprinting process someone would have noticed - all of which surprised me.
Anyway that minor surprise aside I must admit that this book was great fun if a little slow to read - the very nature of it as described above makes it quite a slow read but do not mistake that for a boring one. This is a book you can pick up and spend a few hours reading it and then not touch it again for weeks and start again and still have the same enjoyment without trying to remember what happened and where you got to.
The book is from the Folio Society and I must admit they are beautiful books to hold and own but sometimes you do get to see a few imperfections (more on that later)
The book is really a collection of articles, short stories and even excerpts from larger publications (for example from John Buchan to Ian Fleming). There is a real mix of subjects and stories here. The book is broken up in to chapters which follow a specific theme such as "Hazards of the profession" to "a gaggle of suspects" with the articles arranged to support or explain them.
So what of the book - its a modern reprint of the classic edition (now this is where the Folio Society come in to its own. They take the seminal edition of a classic book and reprint it as only they can do. They are both beautiful and high quality). Now here is the surprise, there is a printing error or must accurately a reference - there are two introductions, the first to this edition the second the original and there is a discrepancy between a date referenced. Now this would be a petty point to make however these books are not cheap and you would have thought in the reprinting process someone would have noticed - all of which surprised me.
Anyway that minor surprise aside I must admit that this book was great fun if a little slow to read - the very nature of it as described above makes it quite a slow read but do not mistake that for a boring one. This is a book you can pick up and spend a few hours reading it and then not touch it again for weeks and start again and still have the same enjoyment without trying to remember what happened and where you got to.
December 11, 2016
The theater of absurd which some call life is on!
An almost festively tongue in the cheek read. An excursion on the roundabouts of shadow affairs including the hazards, delights and perquisites of the profession.
Q:
Take Captain Cumming, the first head of MI6. He wore a gold-rimmed monocle, wrote only in green ink, and it is said, possibly apocryphally, that after he lost a leg in an accident he used to get round the corridors by putting his wooden one on a child’s scooter and propelling himself along with the other. Visitors to MI6 are reported to have been intimidated by his habit of stabbing his wooden leg with his paper-knife in order to drive home the point of an argument. With such nonfictional material at hand, one may question the need for invention.
...
Even conceding that in common parlance the word ‘spy’ includes not only the intelligence gatherer but also the action-oriented secret agent, Bond is no spy, though it is almost a heresy to say so. He is no more than a licensed killer with no mission but to destroy. But even by 1957, when the Bedside Book was first published, he had become so popular that no spy anthology could omit him.
...
A true spy story is not concerned with such matters. ‘Who’ is often given at the outset; there is not necessarily any puzzle, and if there is, the questions to be answered are more likely to be ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’ In this, a spy story resembles human life, being more concerned with situations and psychology.
...
Espionage has attracted many authors. An earlier period of shifting loyalties provided us with Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe—both agents; Shakespeare’s father, too, worked for the Elizabethan spy machine, as, it has been suggested (among other things), did Shakespeare himself. As Somerset Maugham says in Ashenden, a writer has passports—a public identity and a reason for being almost anywhere—very useful to a spy. Writing itself involves creating identities: one could regard it as practising a certain kind of deception. The true spy story resembles real life as we all actually know it—a place where it is rarely quite clear what is happening and what one ought to do.
(c) STELLA RIMINGTON
Q:
I am scarcely qualified to write this preface, for I doubt whether I have known more than a dozen spies in my life, and I am still uncertain about two of them—a certain Swiss business man whose notebook I borrowed for a few hours many years ago (strangely it contained the address of a friend of mine two thousand miles away who died a year later in a Nazi concentration camp), and another man of rather indeterminate origin with whom I planned to spend a Christmas holiday in the Banana Islands, in the company of two African blind dates—malaria robbed me of that holiday, somebody else’s malaria, which made it worse. Of one spy, however, I have reason to be certain: he had hardly the qualifications of the others, for he was illiterate, he couldn’t count above ten, and the only point of the compass he knew was the East, because he was a Mohammedan. I was reminded of him in recent years by the report of a divorce case in which the judge expressed severe criticisms of a private detective. The detective was also illiterate, he rode to his work on a bicycle and dictated his reports to his landlady who was stone deaf. Life is strange.
(c)
Q:
SCHNITZEL ALIAS JONES
“I saw you talking to Mr Schnitzel,” he said. “He’s a little under the weather. He has too light a head for liquors.”
I agreed that he had a light head, and said I understood his name was Jones.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” said the captain. “His name is Schnitzel. He used to work for the Nitrate Trust in New York. Then he came down here as an agent. He’s a good boy not to tell things to. Understand? Sometimes I carry him under one name, and the next voyage under another. The purser and he fix it up between ‘em. It pleases him, and it don’t hurt anybody else, so long as I tell them about it.
...
I did not again see Schnitzel until, with haggard eyes and suspiciously wet hair, he joined the captain, doctor, purser, and myself at breakfast. In the phrases of the Tenderloin, he told us cheerfully that he had been grandly intoxicated, and to recover drank mixtures of raw egg, vinegar, and red pepper, the sight of which took away every appetite save his own. When to this he had added a bottle of beer, he declared himself a new man. The new man followed me to the deck, and with the truculent bearing of one who expects to be repelled, he asked if, the day before, he had not made a fool of himself.
I suggested he had been somewhat confidential.
At once he recovered his pose and patronised me.
“Don’t you believe it,” he said. “That’s all part of my game. ‘Confidence for confidence’ is the way I work it. That’s how I learn things. I tell a man something on the inside, and he says: ‘Here’s a nice young fellow. Nothing stand-offish about him,’ and he tells me something he shouldn’t. Like as not what I told him wasn’t true. See?”
I assured him he interested me greatly.
...
“You make your report to the State Department,” he explained, “and I make mine to—my people. Who they are doesn’t matter. You’d like to know, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but—that’s my secret.”
My only feelings were a desire to kick Schnitzel heavily, but for Schnitzel to suspect that was impossible. Rather, he pictured me as shaken by his disclosures.
...
As he hung over the rail the glare of the sun on the tumbling water lit up his foolish, mongrel features, exposed their cunning, their utter lack of any character, and showed behind the shifty eyes the vacant, half-crooked mind.
Schnitzel was smiling to himself with a smile of complete self-satisfaction. In the light of his later conduct, I grew to understand that smile. He had anticipated a rebuff, and he had been received, as he read it, with consideration. The irony of my politeness he had entirely missed. Instead, he read in what I said the admiration of the amateur for the professional. He saw what he believed to be a high agent of the Government treating him as a worthy antagonist. In no other way can I explain his later heaping upon me his confidences. It was the vanity of a child trying to show off.
...
As I worked it out, Schnitzel was a spy because it gave him an importance he had not been able to obtain by any other effort. As a child and as a clerk, it was easy to see that among his associates Schnitzel must always have been the butt.
...
To me, that speech seemed to give Schnitzel’s view of the values of his life. His vanity demanded he be pointed at, if even with contempt. But the contempt never reached him—he only knew that at last people took note of him. They no longer laughed at him, they were afraid of him. In his heart he believed that they regarded him as one who walked in the dark places of world politics, who possessed an evil knowledge of great men as evil as himself, as one who by blackmail held public ministers at his mercy.
...
It was most undignified of me, but in five minutes I excused myself, and sent to the State Department the following words:
“Roses red, violets blue, send snow.”
Later at the State Department the only person who did not eventually pardon my jest was the clerk who had sat up until three in the morning with my cable, trying to fit it to any known code.
Immediately after my return to the Hotel Venezuela Schnitzel excused himself, and half an hour later returned in triumph with the cable operator and ordered lunch for both. They imbibed much sweet champagne.
When we again were safe at sea, I said: “Schnitzel, how much did you pay that Frenchman to let you read my second cable?”
Schnitzel’s reply was prompt and complacent.
“One hundred dollars gold. It was worth it. Do you want to know how I doped it out?”
I even challenged him to do so.
“ ‘Roses red’—war declared: ‘violets blue’—outlook bad, or blue; ‘send snow’—send squadron, because the white squadron is white like snow. See? It was too easy.”
“Schnitzel,” I cried, “you are wonderful!”
...
The report we finally drew up was so sensational that I was of a mind to throw it overboard. It accused members of the Cabinet, of our Senate, diplomats, business men of national interest, judges of the Valencia courts, private secretaries, clerks, hired bullies, and filibusters. Men the trust could not bribe it had blackmailed. Those it could not corrupt, and they were pitifully few, it crushed with some disgraceful charge.
...
“I’ve got papers on me that’s worth a million to a certain party,” he whispered. “You understand, my notes in cipher.”
He scowled with intense mystery.
“I keep ’em in an oiled-silk bag, tied around my neck with a string. And here,” he added hastily, patting his hip, as though to forestall any attack I might make upon his person, “I carry my automatic. It shoots nine bullets in five seconds. They got to be quick to catch me.”
“Well, if you have either of those things on you,” I said testily, “I don’t want to know it. How often have I told you not to talk and drink at the same time?”
“Ah, go on,” laughed Schnitzel. “That’s an old gag, warning a fellow not to talk so as to make him talk. I do that myself.”
That Schnitzel had important papers tied to his neck I no more believe than that he wore a shirt of chain armour, but to please him I pretended to be greatly concerned.
“Now that we’re getting into New York,” I said, “you must be very careful. A man who carried such important documents on his person might be murdered for them. I think you ought to disguise yourself.”
A picture of my bag being carried ashore by Schnitzel in the uniform of a ship’s steward rather pleased me.
...
“And then, I always live under an assumed name.”
“Like ‘Jones’?” I suggested.
“Well, sometimes ‘Jones’,” he admitted.“To me,” I said, “ ‘Jones’ lacks imagination. It’s the sort of name you give when you’re arrested for exceeding the speed limit. Why don’t you call yourself Machiavelli?”
...
In a mean, common room, stretched where he had been struck back upon the bed, I found the boy who had elected to meddle in the “problems of two governments.”
(c) RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
(c)
An almost festively tongue in the cheek read. An excursion on the roundabouts of shadow affairs including the hazards, delights and perquisites of the profession.
Q:
Take Captain Cumming, the first head of MI6. He wore a gold-rimmed monocle, wrote only in green ink, and it is said, possibly apocryphally, that after he lost a leg in an accident he used to get round the corridors by putting his wooden one on a child’s scooter and propelling himself along with the other. Visitors to MI6 are reported to have been intimidated by his habit of stabbing his wooden leg with his paper-knife in order to drive home the point of an argument. With such nonfictional material at hand, one may question the need for invention.
...
Even conceding that in common parlance the word ‘spy’ includes not only the intelligence gatherer but also the action-oriented secret agent, Bond is no spy, though it is almost a heresy to say so. He is no more than a licensed killer with no mission but to destroy. But even by 1957, when the Bedside Book was first published, he had become so popular that no spy anthology could omit him.
...
A true spy story is not concerned with such matters. ‘Who’ is often given at the outset; there is not necessarily any puzzle, and if there is, the questions to be answered are more likely to be ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’ In this, a spy story resembles human life, being more concerned with situations and psychology.
...
Espionage has attracted many authors. An earlier period of shifting loyalties provided us with Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe—both agents; Shakespeare’s father, too, worked for the Elizabethan spy machine, as, it has been suggested (among other things), did Shakespeare himself. As Somerset Maugham says in Ashenden, a writer has passports—a public identity and a reason for being almost anywhere—very useful to a spy. Writing itself involves creating identities: one could regard it as practising a certain kind of deception. The true spy story resembles real life as we all actually know it—a place where it is rarely quite clear what is happening and what one ought to do.
(c) STELLA RIMINGTON
Q:
I am scarcely qualified to write this preface, for I doubt whether I have known more than a dozen spies in my life, and I am still uncertain about two of them—a certain Swiss business man whose notebook I borrowed for a few hours many years ago (strangely it contained the address of a friend of mine two thousand miles away who died a year later in a Nazi concentration camp), and another man of rather indeterminate origin with whom I planned to spend a Christmas holiday in the Banana Islands, in the company of two African blind dates—malaria robbed me of that holiday, somebody else’s malaria, which made it worse. Of one spy, however, I have reason to be certain: he had hardly the qualifications of the others, for he was illiterate, he couldn’t count above ten, and the only point of the compass he knew was the East, because he was a Mohammedan. I was reminded of him in recent years by the report of a divorce case in which the judge expressed severe criticisms of a private detective. The detective was also illiterate, he rode to his work on a bicycle and dictated his reports to his landlady who was stone deaf. Life is strange.
(c)
Q:
SCHNITZEL ALIAS JONES
“I saw you talking to Mr Schnitzel,” he said. “He’s a little under the weather. He has too light a head for liquors.”
I agreed that he had a light head, and said I understood his name was Jones.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” said the captain. “His name is Schnitzel. He used to work for the Nitrate Trust in New York. Then he came down here as an agent. He’s a good boy not to tell things to. Understand? Sometimes I carry him under one name, and the next voyage under another. The purser and he fix it up between ‘em. It pleases him, and it don’t hurt anybody else, so long as I tell them about it.
...
I did not again see Schnitzel until, with haggard eyes and suspiciously wet hair, he joined the captain, doctor, purser, and myself at breakfast. In the phrases of the Tenderloin, he told us cheerfully that he had been grandly intoxicated, and to recover drank mixtures of raw egg, vinegar, and red pepper, the sight of which took away every appetite save his own. When to this he had added a bottle of beer, he declared himself a new man. The new man followed me to the deck, and with the truculent bearing of one who expects to be repelled, he asked if, the day before, he had not made a fool of himself.
I suggested he had been somewhat confidential.
At once he recovered his pose and patronised me.
“Don’t you believe it,” he said. “That’s all part of my game. ‘Confidence for confidence’ is the way I work it. That’s how I learn things. I tell a man something on the inside, and he says: ‘Here’s a nice young fellow. Nothing stand-offish about him,’ and he tells me something he shouldn’t. Like as not what I told him wasn’t true. See?”
I assured him he interested me greatly.
...
“You make your report to the State Department,” he explained, “and I make mine to—my people. Who they are doesn’t matter. You’d like to know, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but—that’s my secret.”
My only feelings were a desire to kick Schnitzel heavily, but for Schnitzel to suspect that was impossible. Rather, he pictured me as shaken by his disclosures.
...
As he hung over the rail the glare of the sun on the tumbling water lit up his foolish, mongrel features, exposed their cunning, their utter lack of any character, and showed behind the shifty eyes the vacant, half-crooked mind.
Schnitzel was smiling to himself with a smile of complete self-satisfaction. In the light of his later conduct, I grew to understand that smile. He had anticipated a rebuff, and he had been received, as he read it, with consideration. The irony of my politeness he had entirely missed. Instead, he read in what I said the admiration of the amateur for the professional. He saw what he believed to be a high agent of the Government treating him as a worthy antagonist. In no other way can I explain his later heaping upon me his confidences. It was the vanity of a child trying to show off.
...
As I worked it out, Schnitzel was a spy because it gave him an importance he had not been able to obtain by any other effort. As a child and as a clerk, it was easy to see that among his associates Schnitzel must always have been the butt.
...
To me, that speech seemed to give Schnitzel’s view of the values of his life. His vanity demanded he be pointed at, if even with contempt. But the contempt never reached him—he only knew that at last people took note of him. They no longer laughed at him, they were afraid of him. In his heart he believed that they regarded him as one who walked in the dark places of world politics, who possessed an evil knowledge of great men as evil as himself, as one who by blackmail held public ministers at his mercy.
...
It was most undignified of me, but in five minutes I excused myself, and sent to the State Department the following words:
“Roses red, violets blue, send snow.”
Later at the State Department the only person who did not eventually pardon my jest was the clerk who had sat up until three in the morning with my cable, trying to fit it to any known code.
Immediately after my return to the Hotel Venezuela Schnitzel excused himself, and half an hour later returned in triumph with the cable operator and ordered lunch for both. They imbibed much sweet champagne.
When we again were safe at sea, I said: “Schnitzel, how much did you pay that Frenchman to let you read my second cable?”
Schnitzel’s reply was prompt and complacent.
“One hundred dollars gold. It was worth it. Do you want to know how I doped it out?”
I even challenged him to do so.
“ ‘Roses red’—war declared: ‘violets blue’—outlook bad, or blue; ‘send snow’—send squadron, because the white squadron is white like snow. See? It was too easy.”
“Schnitzel,” I cried, “you are wonderful!”
...
The report we finally drew up was so sensational that I was of a mind to throw it overboard. It accused members of the Cabinet, of our Senate, diplomats, business men of national interest, judges of the Valencia courts, private secretaries, clerks, hired bullies, and filibusters. Men the trust could not bribe it had blackmailed. Those it could not corrupt, and they were pitifully few, it crushed with some disgraceful charge.
...
“I’ve got papers on me that’s worth a million to a certain party,” he whispered. “You understand, my notes in cipher.”
He scowled with intense mystery.
“I keep ’em in an oiled-silk bag, tied around my neck with a string. And here,” he added hastily, patting his hip, as though to forestall any attack I might make upon his person, “I carry my automatic. It shoots nine bullets in five seconds. They got to be quick to catch me.”
“Well, if you have either of those things on you,” I said testily, “I don’t want to know it. How often have I told you not to talk and drink at the same time?”
“Ah, go on,” laughed Schnitzel. “That’s an old gag, warning a fellow not to talk so as to make him talk. I do that myself.”
That Schnitzel had important papers tied to his neck I no more believe than that he wore a shirt of chain armour, but to please him I pretended to be greatly concerned.
“Now that we’re getting into New York,” I said, “you must be very careful. A man who carried such important documents on his person might be murdered for them. I think you ought to disguise yourself.”
A picture of my bag being carried ashore by Schnitzel in the uniform of a ship’s steward rather pleased me.
...
“And then, I always live under an assumed name.”
“Like ‘Jones’?” I suggested.
“Well, sometimes ‘Jones’,” he admitted.“To me,” I said, “ ‘Jones’ lacks imagination. It’s the sort of name you give when you’re arrested for exceeding the speed limit. Why don’t you call yourself Machiavelli?”
...
In a mean, common room, stretched where he had been struck back upon the bed, I found the boy who had elected to meddle in the “problems of two governments.”
(c) RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
(c)
June 20, 2021
"For in this strange funny nightmare world, we welcome the prosaic." - Graham Greene.
And you would think, on opening this slim little anthology compiled by Graham (who else, of course?) and his brother Hugh, both well-known for, among many other things, being ardent bibliophiles and also passionate collectors of old treasures from many a second-hand bookshop across the breadth of England, that this is a serious-minded, almost scholarly encyclopedia of what is espionage, what are its techniques and tricks, what are some of the greatest and lowest points of the same and so on. Instead, the Greene brothers end up compiling an incredible, even irreverent and always eclectic collection of stories, excerpts, reports, snatches of plays, full-length accounts and even poems, both fictional and factual, concerning all the exciting, mundane, dangerous, hedonistic and downright patriotic aspects of the life and work of a spy.
This is less of an encyclopedia, then, put together partially by a master storyteller who, apart from possessing an interest in intrigue, had worked in MI6 himself; rather, this is an enjoyably loose, even, in places, jaunty and oddly poignant collection of bits, pieces, stories and verses that reveal just how eventful, if not always thrilling or even disillusioning, can it be for a spy, be it in fact or fiction.
What surprised me however is how meticulously have the Greenes put this collection together. "The Spy's Bedside Book", in a wink to its title, is divided neatly like a journal into different categories - "For Beginners", "Tricks Of The Trade", "Hazards Of The Profession" (followed immediately by the delights of the same) and so on; a few sections are even devoted to some of the least known or literally unknown stories from both fact and fiction that even the most fanatics of spy fiction and real-life espionage would not know about. There is a stirring, poignant poem by Kipling charting arduous and dangerous odyssey of a spy; there is yet another, more beautifully ironic, by Robert Browning (not surprising here since Greene was a lifelong admirer of the poet) that charts, on the other hand, the gritty, grimy, almost anonymous routine of a down and dirty spy. And along with these, we are also told about, in my favourite section "A Gaggle Of Suspects", the unmistakable sense of paranoia that is indispensable from the realm of espionage and how it even holds the most trusted and recognised faces hostage. From William Blake to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from Gauguin to D.H Lawrence and even Thomas Mann, none of these legendary artists, poets and storytellers were free from the taint of suspicion. It is both darkly comic and eerily unsettling.
That said, how can a book about spies be without the thrills and the spills? "Hazards Of The Profession" presents us a series of neatly clipped chronicles of danger and peril, both real and fictional, meshed together devilishly in which Thomas Edward Lawrence is whipped by the Ottoman Turks and in which Dennis Wheatley's fictional spy finds himself near death more than once. There is a poetically bleak excerpt picked out deftly from Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" and there are equally sobering and disquieting reports of the fatal misadventures of a handful of German spies during the Second World War.
But again, I remind you, this is far from a serious, even grim read and the other sections, particularly, "Tricks Of The Trade" cram in the most fiendish of surprises and most startling twists and turns that will make you chuckle and even, if not amused, smile devilishly at the sheer perverse genius of these tricks as well. I leave you all to discover those tricks as well as the guileless pleasures of "Professional Perquisites", including the best champagne in the world, as well as experience the white-knuckle surprise and thrill of "Some Simple Disguises" as well.
There are a few, very few dull spots in this ensemble - mostly from James Fenimore Cooper's "The Spy" which I wonder as to how could this, called by some as the harbinger of the espionage genre, could be so dull even in its parts. And this is by no means the most complete and exhaustive of all fiction and fact on espionage. But that does not seem to be the intention here and I would like to believe that the Greene brothers were on to something even better. By presenting us these mostly enjoyable and light, bite-sized pieces of the many facets of the world of spies and traitors as it was in real life and as it was portrayed in popular fiction, they are also egging us to discover their sources firsthand and dive into the ocean from which they had drawn in the first place. And I, for one, cannot resist anymore the urge to either read a novel by Buchan or Wheatley or even make my way through the stories of Maugham and even give a try to Eric Ambler. As Graham puts it so succinctly in his equally droll and unforgettable introduction, this book is all about the "strange", the "funny", the "nightmare world" and even both the heroic and the "prosaic". For this is a book in which James Bond savours both the best champagne in the world and vodka with pepper. Find out for yourself.
And you would think, on opening this slim little anthology compiled by Graham (who else, of course?) and his brother Hugh, both well-known for, among many other things, being ardent bibliophiles and also passionate collectors of old treasures from many a second-hand bookshop across the breadth of England, that this is a serious-minded, almost scholarly encyclopedia of what is espionage, what are its techniques and tricks, what are some of the greatest and lowest points of the same and so on. Instead, the Greene brothers end up compiling an incredible, even irreverent and always eclectic collection of stories, excerpts, reports, snatches of plays, full-length accounts and even poems, both fictional and factual, concerning all the exciting, mundane, dangerous, hedonistic and downright patriotic aspects of the life and work of a spy.
This is less of an encyclopedia, then, put together partially by a master storyteller who, apart from possessing an interest in intrigue, had worked in MI6 himself; rather, this is an enjoyably loose, even, in places, jaunty and oddly poignant collection of bits, pieces, stories and verses that reveal just how eventful, if not always thrilling or even disillusioning, can it be for a spy, be it in fact or fiction.
What surprised me however is how meticulously have the Greenes put this collection together. "The Spy's Bedside Book", in a wink to its title, is divided neatly like a journal into different categories - "For Beginners", "Tricks Of The Trade", "Hazards Of The Profession" (followed immediately by the delights of the same) and so on; a few sections are even devoted to some of the least known or literally unknown stories from both fact and fiction that even the most fanatics of spy fiction and real-life espionage would not know about. There is a stirring, poignant poem by Kipling charting arduous and dangerous odyssey of a spy; there is yet another, more beautifully ironic, by Robert Browning (not surprising here since Greene was a lifelong admirer of the poet) that charts, on the other hand, the gritty, grimy, almost anonymous routine of a down and dirty spy. And along with these, we are also told about, in my favourite section "A Gaggle Of Suspects", the unmistakable sense of paranoia that is indispensable from the realm of espionage and how it even holds the most trusted and recognised faces hostage. From William Blake to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from Gauguin to D.H Lawrence and even Thomas Mann, none of these legendary artists, poets and storytellers were free from the taint of suspicion. It is both darkly comic and eerily unsettling.
That said, how can a book about spies be without the thrills and the spills? "Hazards Of The Profession" presents us a series of neatly clipped chronicles of danger and peril, both real and fictional, meshed together devilishly in which Thomas Edward Lawrence is whipped by the Ottoman Turks and in which Dennis Wheatley's fictional spy finds himself near death more than once. There is a poetically bleak excerpt picked out deftly from Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" and there are equally sobering and disquieting reports of the fatal misadventures of a handful of German spies during the Second World War.
But again, I remind you, this is far from a serious, even grim read and the other sections, particularly, "Tricks Of The Trade" cram in the most fiendish of surprises and most startling twists and turns that will make you chuckle and even, if not amused, smile devilishly at the sheer perverse genius of these tricks as well. I leave you all to discover those tricks as well as the guileless pleasures of "Professional Perquisites", including the best champagne in the world, as well as experience the white-knuckle surprise and thrill of "Some Simple Disguises" as well.
There are a few, very few dull spots in this ensemble - mostly from James Fenimore Cooper's "The Spy" which I wonder as to how could this, called by some as the harbinger of the espionage genre, could be so dull even in its parts. And this is by no means the most complete and exhaustive of all fiction and fact on espionage. But that does not seem to be the intention here and I would like to believe that the Greene brothers were on to something even better. By presenting us these mostly enjoyable and light, bite-sized pieces of the many facets of the world of spies and traitors as it was in real life and as it was portrayed in popular fiction, they are also egging us to discover their sources firsthand and dive into the ocean from which they had drawn in the first place. And I, for one, cannot resist anymore the urge to either read a novel by Buchan or Wheatley or even make my way through the stories of Maugham and even give a try to Eric Ambler. As Graham puts it so succinctly in his equally droll and unforgettable introduction, this book is all about the "strange", the "funny", the "nightmare world" and even both the heroic and the "prosaic". For this is a book in which James Bond savours both the best champagne in the world and vodka with pepper. Find out for yourself.
May 26, 2021
A correction 15 September 2020.
An eclectic collection of very short excerpts of traditional spy fiction and some intriguing non-fiction. The tales are drawn predominantly, but not exclusively, from British writers ranging through the years and as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Eric Ambler and Lord Baden–Powell. The dedication to ‘To the immortal Memory of William le Queux and John Buchan’ discloses both the tone of the selections and the fondness of the Greene brothers for the work of serialist Le Queux, though I’m not sure why. Like others collections of this type the contributions vary considerably.
My favourite pieces are factual accounts, perhaps even stranger than fiction, of German spies in Britain during World War Two, penned by Peter Fleming, wartime Colonel, and Ian Fleming’s smarter, more handsome older brother, at one time more famous than his sibling. In ‘A Little Black Beret’ Dr Herman Goertz is dropped into Ireland with vague plans to promote a German invasion, but needing to walk 70 miles to his rendezvous he is obliged to swim the River Boyne and this ordeal costs him his invisible ink. It went downhill from there.
In ‘A Segment of German Sausage’ two men and a woman land in Banffshire in September 1940 and are arrested within hours. One of the men was found to have on him, among other things: ‘a wireless set; a loaded Mauser automatic…a list of bomber and fighter stations in East Anglia… and a segment of German sausage.’ Not easy being a spy.
An eclectic collection of very short excerpts of traditional spy fiction and some intriguing non-fiction. The tales are drawn predominantly, but not exclusively, from British writers ranging through the years and as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Eric Ambler and Lord Baden–Powell. The dedication to ‘To the immortal Memory of William le Queux and John Buchan’ discloses both the tone of the selections and the fondness of the Greene brothers for the work of serialist Le Queux, though I’m not sure why. Like others collections of this type the contributions vary considerably.
My favourite pieces are factual accounts, perhaps even stranger than fiction, of German spies in Britain during World War Two, penned by Peter Fleming, wartime Colonel, and Ian Fleming’s smarter, more handsome older brother, at one time more famous than his sibling. In ‘A Little Black Beret’ Dr Herman Goertz is dropped into Ireland with vague plans to promote a German invasion, but needing to walk 70 miles to his rendezvous he is obliged to swim the River Boyne and this ordeal costs him his invisible ink. It went downhill from there.
In ‘A Segment of German Sausage’ two men and a woman land in Banffshire in September 1940 and are arrested within hours. One of the men was found to have on him, among other things: ‘a wireless set; a loaded Mauser automatic…a list of bomber and fighter stations in East Anglia… and a segment of German sausage.’ Not easy being a spy.
June 26, 2021
As Stella Rimington (former director general of MI5) states in her Introduction to the Folio Society version of this book, the title should not be The Spy’s Bedside Book but The Bedside Book of Spies. That is because it is not a book about how to be a spy or one giving away the secrets of spying; rather it is a compendium of extracts from spy stories – 73 of them! There are also a small number of factual rather than fictional entries – comments made in reports. The authors range from John Buchan and William Le Queux to Ian Fleming and Rudyard Kipling, and many of these part-stories are only three or four pages long. This leaves you wanting more so may be an inspiration to read more spy stories going forward.
Interestingly, and as an aside, some of the authors writing between 1895 and 1914 churned out so many stories and novels about spies, especially Imperial German spies, that they have been credited with ‘driving the prime minister mad’ by ramping up public fear of them and getting press attention, and thus almost forcing the British government to establish formal secret services, which they did in 1909. Among the best of these novels is Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands. This had the beneficial effect, however, of making Britain more prepared for the essential need for secret services a short while later during the First World War.
Back to the book: my version has many excellent illustrations drawn by Nick Hardcastle, and these add to the pleasure of the book. This is a book to dip into rather than read cover-to-cover, and is enjoyable but not stunning. Solid three stars.
Interestingly, and as an aside, some of the authors writing between 1895 and 1914 churned out so many stories and novels about spies, especially Imperial German spies, that they have been credited with ‘driving the prime minister mad’ by ramping up public fear of them and getting press attention, and thus almost forcing the British government to establish formal secret services, which they did in 1909. Among the best of these novels is Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands. This had the beneficial effect, however, of making Britain more prepared for the essential need for secret services a short while later during the First World War.
Back to the book: my version has many excellent illustrations drawn by Nick Hardcastle, and these add to the pleasure of the book. This is a book to dip into rather than read cover-to-cover, and is enjoyable but not stunning. Solid three stars.
January 10, 2021
I'm not sure if this was appropriate bedtime reading, at least for me. But it was amusing and eye-opening. The life of a spy is not for the faint of heart! I enjoyed the arrangement of this book, that each story was a bitesize morsel, easily consumed at any time of the day. An entertaining read.
April 10, 2010
Good cloak-and-dagger fun from Graham Greene and all his undercover friends. This is a delightful compilation of derring-do. My only complaint is that when the story or excerpt is good, you want more, much more. But then it wouldn't be as good a tour of all things nefarious.
May 6, 2018
Considering the author and the subject, this isn't as much fun as you might think.
January 3, 2019
An amusing read making you wonder how any country kept any secrets and how paranoia got in the way of finding tracking or using agents. The levels of incompetence and farce were enjoyable to read but did people really pay for these acts? A good number of stories could have gone on for a few more pages but then the book would have lost some interest and immediacy. Some stories are amusing, some hard to believe and occasionally aspects that are too simple for words. The stories are a bit dated and have to be imagined with another age and the context of dates places and those involved are important but occasionally missing. overall a decent read but not spectacular or really adventurous in the may of spy novels - although some are alluded too.
April 2, 2021
The concept of The Spy's Bedside Book slightly exceeds its execution. In theory, an anthology of snippets from famous stories of real and fictional espionage sounds enticing, but here they add up to a collection of ill-portioned hors d'oeuvres that left me slightly unsatisfied and hungry for more.
August 17, 2021
I don't get it. I read most of the first section and the jumbled narrative just put me to sleep. Sometimes it's just a paragraph about something. Or of certain people setting up a meeting. It made no sense to me and I'm not wasting my time anymore. I thought it would be a true anthology, a collection of spy stories. I don't know what the point of this is.
June 11, 2022
It took me years to finish this partly as I lost it for a while and partly as the extracts from spy fiction are so brief that I would read a few pages in between other books. It is a good selection of espionage fiction, mainly from the First World War and its run-up.
April 2, 2023
An anthology that’s mostly a lot of fun to read but, containing only snippets as it does, leaves you wanting more or, possibly, wondering why that piece was selected. A broad mix of the historical, literary and pulpish to entertain most fans of the genre.
December 27, 2020
enjoyed it!
June 24, 2015
If you ever want to become a spy or a secret agent then boy, is this the book for you. Written by Graham Greene, a man who gained international renown as a writer and who also happens to have dabbled with espionage, and his brother Hugh, it’s also introduced by Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5. So convincing is it, in fact, that the anthology was originally bought in bulk by East German intelligence, and there’s also a form at the back offering trade prices to members of the secret services of other foreign nations.
The most interesting thing here, though, is the range of talent that’s featured in this compilation of short stories about espionage – Ian Fleming and John Buchan are here, but so are William Blake, D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Mann. Combine that with the fantastic story-lines and the special details that the authors included, like the way that the agents code their messages and avoid deception, and you’re on to a winner.
This collection won’t necessarily cater to everyone, but it will at least cater to most – whether you’re a fan of one of the authors inside, whether you’re a fan of Graham Greene and you trust his judgement or whether you’re just an espionage aficionado, you’ll be happy.
The most interesting thing here, though, is the range of talent that’s featured in this compilation of short stories about espionage – Ian Fleming and John Buchan are here, but so are William Blake, D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Mann. Combine that with the fantastic story-lines and the special details that the authors included, like the way that the agents code their messages and avoid deception, and you’re on to a winner.
This collection won’t necessarily cater to everyone, but it will at least cater to most – whether you’re a fan of one of the authors inside, whether you’re a fan of Graham Greene and you trust his judgement or whether you’re just an espionage aficionado, you’ll be happy.
June 3, 2015
An interesting rather than gripping anthology compiled by the brothers Graham and Hugh Greene. Sadly, from my point of view at least, most of the extracts dated from the First World War or earlier.
The best piece, by a country mile, was I Spy Charlie Stowe by Graham Greene himself. It was very short and is a stand alone piece which would serve as an absorbing introduction to a novel. I found many comments about it online. Intriguing!
David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil and Liberating Belsen. Both published by Sacristy Press.
The best piece, by a country mile, was I Spy Charlie Stowe by Graham Greene himself. It was very short and is a stand alone piece which would serve as an absorbing introduction to a novel. I found many comments about it online. Intriguing!
David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil and Liberating Belsen. Both published by Sacristy Press.
May 7, 2015
An interesting assortment of short fiction and nonfiction compiled by noted, British author, Graham Greene and his brother. Some of the passages range from the tiny snippets of Le Queux's late 19th century serials, all the way to poetry on the betrayal committed by Benedict Arnold. With the exception of a few clunkers and a couple of confusing and out of context pieces, this collection was well worth the read for anyone interested in the subject of anachronistic spying techniques?
August 13, 2016
More vacation reading and very light. Mostly brief excerpts from pre-1960 spy novels and real-life spy chronicles. They share a kind of innocence about that trade that we lost after 1963, when The Spy Who Came in from the Cold appeared and destroyed any remaining illusions about the glamour of a trade plied in labyrinths of betrayal. A disappointment.
November 29, 2015
This was fun... It is a collection of spy stories, both fiction and non, very much bent towards the first world War era. Some of the language, obviously, is old, but this is still a clever, fun book. Perfect for leaving on your bedside or by your favorite chair and reading a few stories here and there.
March 7, 2016
I thought I was getting a book of short stories, but it's really a book of vignettes drawn from a large number of spy books, both fact and fiction. While amusing, it's not a great read.
It is one of the most handsome books I own. It's beautifully put together, from the layouts to the binding. It's a pleasure to hold in one's hands.
It is one of the most handsome books I own. It's beautifully put together, from the layouts to the binding. It's a pleasure to hold in one's hands.
February 24, 2017
A quick read, but really a jumble of short extracts rather than short stories, leaving very little to be enjoyed by each one. I read this on a trip because it's in my list of Greene books and was available as a kindle loan from a library, but had I realized what it was I probably would not have bothered.
October 6, 2010
An anthology through the beginnings of the spy thriller genre, with a few true stories thrown in. All of the stories are from before 1957, with most of them coming from before World War One. Accordingly, they can at times be a little slow to read for younger readers.
December 2, 2014
This was an interesting blend of anecdotes offered by real-life spies about their experiences and snippets from different eras of spy novels about similar experiences. I liked that it was easy to pick up and read in short sittings, because that was really the amount of time I had to devote to it.
January 10, 2009
I had a difficult time getting into this book.
and for the cost was certainly hoping it would have held together!
I did like the spy tips it gave, but would have liked to see more of them.
and for the cost was certainly hoping it would have held together!
I did like the spy tips it gave, but would have liked to see more of them.
May 3, 2010
originally not what I was expecting but am finding it interesting
September 7, 2014
Some great stories, but it was sometimes frustrating to only have tempting extracts of works I would very much have liked to read in their entirety.
July 12, 2013
Incredible. Just.... incredible. Great book !
August 13, 2014
I was hoping for short stories, but it's topical excerpts instead. The time period of these stories is neat, especially after just finishing a WWII spy book.
August 28, 2015
If you didn't like it, read it again... if you still don't like it, read it again. If at that point, you don't like it... you're an idiot.
Read
January 30, 2016Didn't ever quite get around to finishing this one, must reborrow.
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