Chasing the Zeitgeist

Mike Bodnar reveals how his research into 1967 Britain delayed finishing his book by a year...

An organic thing

I  started writing my spy thriller Unity in February 2021. The date is etched in my memory - all authors remember when they started a work, and what it was like to get those first few words on the page, knowing that the other 200 to 300 pages to come were still blank. Emptiness stretched before me; it was literary high-diving into the unknown.

But while every author starts with a blank page or screen, authors en groupe do not share a common way of working. Some plan and map out their novels in extreme detail, knowing chapter by chapter what they will be writing about. Others draw diagrams, with circles, boxes and arrows linking characters, plot and sub-plots, with dramatic high points highlighted.

Still others, like me, just start writing, with only a notion inside their head as to where their story is going. That's fine though; each to their own. But this latter leap-of-faith writing-as-it-comes approach is the way it works for me. I guess in today's parlance I write organically.

London, 1967

However, once I'd started writing Unity I soon found that I was easily distracted, because as my novel is set in 1967 Britain - almost 60 years ago - I realised as I wrote that I needed to confirm the memories that I had of those days. And let's be clear, in 1967 I was but 13 years old, so I didn't have adult memories to draw on, only the acne-ridden recollections of a broken-voiced youth who was more interested in science fiction than current affairs.

Which is how I found myself interrupting my writing to do research. Let me give you an example from the book: Chapter 2 - Virgil Street Garage, London. Here I was just about 100 words into the story and I needed to find a real street in which to site the 'government garage.' So off I went into Google Maps, checking out satellite and street views, and found Virgil Street, not far from Waterloo Station and also not too distant from MI6 headquarters, Century House.

I wanted a real street so that I could actually see it (I did even go and visit) and write about it factually. There is no garage there, but there's a decent space where one could have been 60 years ago.

Century House today

Century House too caused me to detour onto the Internet; I needed to confirm where the headquarters of MI6 were located in 1967, and it turned out to be at 100 Westminster Bridge Road, a tower block that today is re-clad and refurbished as apartments. Almost 60 years ago it was London's worst-kept secret, and any cabbie could take you there or show you where it was if you asked.

Geographical locations aside, I also wanted to establish the zeitgeist of 1967 by correctly referencing such common objects as telephone kiosks (I do remember how pongy they smelt inside, of tobacco smoke and worse), and the motor vehicles of the time: Rovers, Austins, Ford Cortinas and so on. I even researched the factory colours for the Ford Cortina used by Russian undercover agent Lillian Grimes and her partner Dmitri.

When MI6 Director General Stone lunches with Foreign Secretary George Brown (for it was he) at the Savoy Grill, Brown is so distracted by news of a top intelligence operative resigning that he fails to read the menu, and instead says to the waiter, 'Tell Silvino I'll have whatever he feels would go best with the '55 Cheval Blanc.'

Silvino was the name of the head chef at the Savoy at that time, should you care to research it for yourself. And yes, 1955 Chateau Cheval Blanc was indeed a fine Bordeaux vintage.

My point is that I thoroughly enjoyed chasing information down rabbit holes on the Internet, and I learned more than a few interesting things about the people, places and politics of 1967 Britain. I also became quite knowledgeable about the Browning Hi-Power .9mm pistol, how many rounds it could hold (13) and what its pedigree was (It was also the standard issue firearm to members of the SOE, the Special Operations Executive).

A Browning Hi-Power .9mm

In fact, I often got so absorbed doing the research that almost a whole day would go by with hardly a single page of Unity written, and I have a feeling that had I just concentrated on writing the book instead of going off at tangents it would have been ready for publication a whole year before it was in fact released.

So, what difference does it make whether such details are accurate? Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but there are pernickety readers out there who would delight in finding inconsistencies or historical inaccuracies in a novel, and more than a few reviewers who would use those as ammunition to shoot down self-published novels as being sloppy or lazy. I didn't want to give anyone the opportunity for such schadenfreude, but equally I wanted the story to ring true to anyone who read it, critic or not.

Above all, I wanted to believe in what I was writing myself; the research helped me visualise my characters, how they spoke and acted, whether they smoked, drank bitter or vermouth, wore a hat, or how they determined distance on a map without the aid of Google or the UK Distance Calculator app.

Foreign Secretary George Brown,
'tired and emotional'

The melange of real people - especially the politicians of the day such as George Brown, Alec Douglas-Home, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson - adds weight to the story too, and I as an author felt safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't end up in court for using them: you can't, as a writer, defame the dead. Anyway, Foreign Secretary George Brown really did have a drinking problem, and there were rumours within the intelligence community that there was a plot to oust Harold Wilson. 

My reward for spending so much time on the research comes in the form of feedback and reviews. One perceptive comment, by a doctor of literature no less, notes, 'It's sharply honed thriller-writing, comparable with the very best in the field. Amongst the reading pleasures are the clever and devastating links to 60s political figures and what I call the 'faction' effect: you find yourself wondering: 'Is this actually fiction or has the author got the lowdown on what actually happened?'

Another says, 'I'm staggered with the quality of the writing and the attention to detail.'

Actor Derren Nesbitt

Perhaps the highest compliment comes from veteran actor Derren Nesbitt (star of The Prisoner, Where Eagles Dare, Special Branch and, more recently, the acclaimed movie Tucked) who emailed to tell me that he thinks I am 'a very fine writer... very talented' after he'd read Unity.

I seriously doubt many readers ever bother to investigate whether certain events in novels actually happened (I mean, they are novels after all, works of fiction), or whether some of the characters were real, but in the case of Unity I don't mind if they do check. I did deliberately include extra background information at the end of the book highlighting some of the realities, such as biological warfare experiments undertaken on the British public without their knowledge, details about the British intermediate range ballistic missile the Blue Streak, and Section VII, a division of MI6 which, during World War 2, trained young people as saboteurs, resistance fighters and even killers. That end section is designed to make you go, 'Wow! Really?'

I have started on my next novel and already I'm delving in-depth into the Internet, this time for the zeitgeist of 1970 Northern Ireland, and the beginning of what came to be known as 'The Troubles.' Alec Douglas-Home will be making an appearance again, this time as foreign secretary, and Edward Heath is the prime minister. There will be Ford Transit vans, and I can tell you even now that yes, in 1970, you could hire a car from the Dublin airport branch of Avis Rent-a-Car.

Please excuse me, I have much research to do...

Mike's next book The Liscannor Intercept should be out before Christmas 2023 (but might not be!)

Double-O London

I've always wanted to be a spy. I'd be good at it because, as I understand it, to be effective you have to blend in, be unnoticeable, be in fact the 'grey man'. I do that very well. Every time I walk into a shop I am ignored, likewise at bars, where bar staff just look right through me and serve whoever else is there instead. I am invisible. And thirsty.

In December I met an ex-military man at a Christmas party here in London, and somehow we got around to talking spies. He told me that while in the army he had requested to join the spooks. 'They wouldn't take me,' he laughed. 'Told me I was too tall!' He was indeed over six-foot, and that proved my point: to be an effective intelligence officer in the field you can't be too distinctive.

MI6 - a large and easy target beside Vauxhall Bridge

Times have changed hugely in the intelligence community though. There was a time when the headquarters of MI5 and MI6 would have been kept very low profile, but now all you have to do is Google them and you get their full addresses, historical backgrounds, and all sorts of information the Russians would have had to employ an army of intelligence officers to gather in the days before the Internet.

Anyway, you can't miss MI6 beside Vauxhall Bridge. It's featured in James Bond films and architecturally can hardly be said to blend in. It's an enormous building, all sandstone and green glass, perfectly symmetrical and a large and easy target, as evinced by an RPG attack on it by the Real Irish Republican Army in September 2000. They couldn’t miss – and didn’t – though no injuries or deaths were reported.

MI5, the domestic secret service is in Thames House further down river on the other bank, but although its 1930 architecture is more in keeping with older London it too has featured in mainstream media, notably the eponymous Spooks TV series. I photographed it earlier today, and they no doubt

MI5 - As Seen on TV

caught me doing so on their CCTV cameras hanging off the building. I also noticed a 'technician' up a lighting pole directly opposite, working away at some wiring, while at street level the normally anonymous electrical cabinet was wide open exposing all sorts of internal components, one of which was clearly labelled 'CCTV'. I suspect he worked for the Russians. Or Trump.

Russian operatives disguised as telecommunications workers outside MI5 in London

As I left, a military helicopter flew overhead and I quickened my pace. Back on the tube I decided to put my invisibility to good use and practise my spying skills, to see if I could spot any terrorists. Having recently been educated by the Prince Philip School of Terrorist Identification I knew what to look for. The only problem was, based on Phil’s advice, there were at least fifteen of them in my carriage alone. I got off as quickly as I could.

Instead of alerting the authorities, who were probably following me by now anyway, I went to visit one of the many spy shops in London. This one is in Howland Street, and is called Spymaster. Personally if I ran a spy shop I'd have the entrance as an innocuous door with a brass plate that said something boring like Universal Exports, but no, Spymaster has a large and visible street presence. 

I walked in. I was tempted to say in a Russian accent, 'The roses are blooming early this year' just to see if they had a sense of humour, but the two geeks behind the counter were busy with a customer so I contented myself with a browse. 

As is typical of my blending-in skills they hardly noticed me, even while I was taking photos of their merchandise, which ranged from wearable clothing cameras and recording devices through to counter-surveillance equipment, stab-proof vests and even a demonstration bulletproof car door with bullet holes in the metal and window glass. Well, not holes actually because the armour plating effectively stopped any penetration. Take that Goldfinger.

Everything for the covert operative at Spymaster

I snuck out before they tried to sell me something. Anyway, if you just go on eBay or Amazon you can find all the covert equipment you would ever need, though if you want to maintain anonymity you’d have to order from an Internet café, use someone else’s credit card and get your items delivered to some random address, outside of which you’d have to hover waiting for the postie. Easier to go to Spymaster (who assure a ‘confidential’ service) or one of the others.

I have actually brushed shoulders with the security intelligence world. When I was aged ten I wrote off to Special Branch for career information, which they kindly sent. Later, in my early 20s I wrote to the New Zealand SIS enquiring about job opportunities, and they too responded, but said they only accepted applicants with law degrees. That put me off.

Some years later I was indeed interviewed by a spook, but only as part of a security clearance process for someone who was applying for a job there. I recall the man was certainly non-descript – definitely a grey man – and that he asked me silly questions like, ‘Has the applicant ever been a member of the communist party?’ and, ‘Had the applicant ever been on any protest marches?’ He failed to ask the more obvious, ‘Do you think the applicant is a Russian spy?’

More recently, around 2008, I was engaged on a communications project for the New Zealand Defence Forces, and had to work out of the same building as the Security Intelligence Service. Because I was exposed to this military environment I had to undergo a security clearance, so duly filled in all the forms and supplied evidence of my birth, address, non-communist status, etc.

Two months after I finished the project I received my clearance, to ‘Secret’ level.

But I could never qualify as a spy now anyway, having worked in television. Although that was only in New Zealand, the chances of being recognised during a covert operation are too great. So, not only can I not get any service in shops or bars, I can’t help reduce the terrorist threat either.

The closest I get to the spying world these days is that my sister-in-law lives near the government communications training headquarters. I can’t tell you where of course, because then I’d have to kill you.


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