The cold war provided the perfect excuse for Western governments to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of freedom; to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its tyrants and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and interference, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name of democracy.

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.

It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.

I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.

But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.

What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.