In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.

A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.

Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book.

All power corrupts but some must govern.

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. Fifty years on, I don't associate the book with anything that ever happened to me, save for one wordless encounter at London airport when a worn-out, middle-aged military kind of man in a stained raincoat slammed a handful of mixed foreign change on to the bar and in gritty Irish accents ordered himself as much Scotch as it would buy. In that moment, Alec Leamas was born. Or so my memory, not always a reliable informant, tells me.