Yesterday I posted about John Le Carré. Today I turned the final page of A Legacy of Spies. What a wonderful book it is, I doff my cap to the master. I also mentioned the author’s pro-European, anti-Brexit views. He expresses his pro Europe belief through George Smiley in the final pages. It resonated with me, which brings me to language.
David Cornwell, aka John Le Carré, credited Frank King, his German master at Sherborne School, with inspiring his love of the German language. David went on to study at the University of Bonn, and later graduated with a first class degree in modern languages from Oxford University.
John Le Carré’s Smiley series, (can I call them that?), are set in the Cold War, the front line of which was the Berlin Wall. David Cornwell served in both MI5 and MI6. I have no doubt that his fluency in German would have been a major asset to the intelligence services. How could you be a field operative in East or West Berlin without a fluency in German?
Sir Anthony Standen was an Elizabethan spy who spied in the Netherlands, Spain, and France. I have no doubt that he must have had an exceptional ability in languages. In The Spy who Sank the Armada, I credit this to his childhood in East Molsey, near Hampton Court. There must have been many foreign diplomats nearby, when the monarch was in residence there.
My pro Europe passion flows from the same source as George Smiley’s and his creator’s. When I was young we toured Europe in a caravan during the summer holidays. I remember vividly watching my father drinking wine with Germans who had fought us in the war. When one of them had refused to say what he had done in the war, my father gently pulled up the man’s sleeve to reveal the SS tattoo. “Macht nichts!” My father said. Dad spoke German quite well. He’d picked up the language when he was billeted with a family in Hamburg at the end of the war. Whether the love of peace in Europe stems from fighting a war, hot or cold, or watching your dad drinking wine with former enemies, it’s deep rooted.