Spies and showbusiness have much in common, according to Cambridge academic, and official historian of MI5, Christopher Andrew, who, with theatre producer Julius Green, has written an entertaining, if sometimes frenetic, history, which ranges from the Elizabethan era to the present day. They argue that the two professions "require similar skills and attract similar personalities", with actors and spies "sharing the need to deceive or seduce an audience".
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Andrew and Green claim theirs is the first history of the interplay between the two worlds. It is reflective of their narrative emphasis that they have reversed the title of Charlotte Bingham's 2019 book Spies and Stars: MI5, Showbusiness and Me.
The spy network of Sir Francis Walsingham in the reign of Elizabeth I takes the authors to playwright Christopher Marlowe, with his role as a spy possibly being a factor in his murder in 1593. The playwright Aphra Behn,"the first British woman to make a living as a writer" in the mid-1660s, was first female spy to work for the British government, setting up an Antwerp "honeytrap" targeting exiles working with the Dutch.
The authors provide an extensive list of writers, dramatists and entertainers involved in espionage, including Sir John Vanbrugh, Joseph Addison, Voltaire, Pierre Beaumarchais, Josephine Baker Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene.
Noël Coward, recruited to work with intelligence services in 1938, was used to lobby influential Americans to encourage the United States to enter the Second World War.
Sir Mansfield Cumming, the original "C" and founding head of MI6, would buy disguises from the Royal costumier and wigmaker. Richard Dearlove, before becoming head of MI6 in 1999, "used to travel the world extensively in different identities".
Andrew and Green are particularly interested in documenting lesser-known figures, such as actor Frank Birch, who worked as a cryptographer at Bletchley Park, before eventually becoming Bletchley's Deputy Director. They also reverse the focus, listing actors placed under state surveillance, such as Tallulah Bankhead, whose seduction of young Etonian schoolboys in the 1920s was seen as potentially corrupting Britain's future ruling class.
The authors conclude many intelligence agencies are increasingly using stars for publicity purposes, while social media posts are common. Many of Britain's GCHQ tweets are often linked to the entertainment business, while last Valentine's Day the CIA tweeted an encrypted poem with code-breaking clues. The two worlds of spies and showbusiness seem now closer than ever.
