Charlotte Bingham's father John was a member of MI5 and the inspiration for George Smiley; he carried a swordstick and went about ‘doing covert security work in defence of the nation'.
We are told that he possessed a deceptively mild manner, and that his silences and low voice were full of implied threat. ‘He never gets angry,' says Charlotte, ‘and people who don't get angry are always to be feared', though I don't see how that explains Hitler, or even my Welsh mother.
John Bingham doesn't have much opportunity to be cross or show his mettle in Spies And Stars. Indeed, the secret service seems a rather jolly family affair, as Charlotte is herself employed in her dad's office, where the biggest crisis is jamming the typewriter with six sheets of carbon paper. (Younger readers, if they can control their hilarity and incredulity, will need to be told what a ‘typewriter' looked like and what ‘carbon paper' was used for.)
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