I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.

There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.

For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.

By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.

When it comes to recruiting people for the secret world, what the recruiters are looking for is pretty much what I had. I was unanchored, looking for an institution to look after me. I had a bit of larceny. I understood larceny. I understood the natural criminality in people - because it was - it was all around me. And I have no doubt there was a chunk of it inside me too. Once I found that identity, it took root in me. It exactly - it gelled with the world that I'd known in the past.

It was a charming fantasy of romantics that the spies would stop spying, that political conflict would end and politicians would tell the truth. Unfortunately that has not been the case.