The Spies Who Lied To Me: The real-life inspiration behind Black Doves...
Also: Aston Martins in a deposed dictator's lavish pad, an alleged spy with a prince's ear, and a prize fit for 007...
(Keira Knightley in Black Doves. Picture: Netflix/Canva)
Good of you to join us, subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Getting straight down to business, here’s the latest edition of This Newsletter Will Self-Destruct…
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And don’t forget to read all the way to the bottom of the newsletter in order to see how you could win a special prize…
🂡 If you were infiltrating what you believe is a dangerous group of extremists, how far would you go to stay undercover? Lie, break the law…or even have a child with an individual you are spying on?
It’s this possible predicament that sparked the idea for Black Doves, Netflix’s latest spy thriller series, which has garnered dozens of fulsome reviews. It portrays private spy Helen - played by Keira Knightley - who has convinced an implausibly cuddly defence secretary that she is the woman, wife, and mother of his dreams - and not a trained killer who is going through his WhatsApp messages for government secrets.
Cue a series of set-piece shoot-outs, stabbings, and even Zadie Smith references against a backdrop of neon London, but behind the slapstick stunts is a real spy story that has been at the heart of an ongoing government inquiry.
As series creator Joe Barton told The Radio Times: “I had been reading about those spy cops..they infiltrated that environmental group and had ended up having children with them. I mean, a really horrific story.”
That horrific story is the ‘Spy Cops’ scandal, which saw close to a dozen police infiltrate supposedly dangerous environmental groups across a 30 year period from the mid 1980s.
Among their tricks was recording conversations with specially rigged Casio watches, but more alarming was how some officers maintained their cover by forming relationships, making marriage proposals, and even fathering children with the activists they were spying on.
The public inquiry into the scandal has heard how former spy cop Bob Lambert - awarded The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2008, if you please - ‘bragged’ about fathering a child while undercover. In 2020, Scotland Yard paid out a confidential sum to Lambert’s son, who was 26 when he stumbled upon a series of newspaper articles that showed his father was not a radical left-wing activity, but a hardened undercover police officer.
The same Bob Lambert also used his undercover work to co-author the ‘McLibel’ leaflet, a six-page hand-out that denounced McDonald’s environmental and workers’ rights record and sparked a landmark libel case, one of the longest in British history. And providing significant pro-bono assistance to the environmental group taken to court was a young Keir Starmer.
A future Prime Minister unknowingly defending the work of an alleged agent provocateur may make an interesting series for Netflix…
(Gemma Arterton)
🂡 A former Bond girl has said the idea of 007 being played by a man would certainly not be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
“Isn’t a female James Bond like Mary Poppins being played by a man?”, Quantum of Solace actor Gemma Arterton told The Times.
“They talk about it, but I think people would find it too outrageous. Sometimes you just have to respect the tradition.”
🂡 Causing almost as much outrage was the Telegraph’s ‘scoop’ that the UK intelligence services have been running a summer internship for young people from ethnic minority communities - while being closed for white British applicants.
A representative from GCHQ, MI5, and MI6 said: “The summer intelligence internship is a lawful measure used by the intelligence agencies to encourage people from under-represented groups to consider careers with our organisations.”
When it comes to representation, the latest report from SIS (aka MI6) shows that 91.2 percent of its workforce was white and 61 percent was male. In 2021, 81.7 percent of the population in England and Wales was white and 49 percent was male.
🂡 It’s worth noting that the House of Common’s Intelligence and Security Committee has reformed with new members, eight months after it was dissolved due to the general election. The committee usually publishes an annual report on the state of the intelligence services in December, but no news so far…
🂡 Just when you thought Prince Andrew couldn’t produce any more sweat (or is it any less sweat?), a Chinese business associate and ‘close confidant’ of His Royal Highness has been banned from the UK over allegedly spying for the Chinese Communist Party.
As the Chinese proverb goes, a bosom friend afar brings distant lands near.
🂡 Russia has accepted a high-profile Syrian refugee in the form of Bashar al-Assad, fleeing Syria as militants and rebels take over the country and reveal the former dictator’s lavish ‘Bond villain-style lair’, as reported by various outlets.
A Syrian influencer and comedian shared videos of him wandering around the former abode of the former dictator, who clearly left in a hurry judging by the Louis Vuitton, Hermes, and Dior bags left strewn around various rooms.
In a spacious garage, the ‘Butcher of Damascus’ left behind his collection of classic and luxury cars, which included high-end Lamborghinis…and a few models from Aston Martin.
Clearly, there’s no accounting for taste.
🂡 The Times has uncovered what it claims to be a string of undercover operations carried out across Europe by the Russian spy unit behind the Salisbury poisonings.
Over the last two decades, GRU Unit 29155 is said to be behind an attempted assassination of a Bulgarian arms dealer and a series of attacks on arms depots in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.
🂡 And finally, here’s some other tales that caught our eye…
Tracking Putin’s Most Feared Secret Agency—From Inside a Russian Prison and Beyond
RFK Jr.'s secret push to prove that the CIA killed his uncle
How North Korean spies are infiltrating western IT departments
(Orelbar Brown’s Scaramanga sweatshirt and an unknown operative. Picture: Orlebar Brown)
Tinker, Tailor…
✃ Orlebar Brown has launched a capsule collection of clothing for anyone who has a golden bullet to pop in the post.
The Scaramanga Toweling Sweatshirt doesn’t quite cost its weight in gold, coming in at £395.
Or if you’re planning to stake-out a potential gold bullion thief at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami, maybe the Riviera Blue one-piece would be more your style, also at £395.
Under surveillance…
📽A world famous actor and his wife are dining in a restaurant when a young woman in purple hot pants walks past. The actor’s wife promptly slaps her husband around the face.
“What was that for?” the wounded star asks.
“Just in case,” his wife answers.
Such was the life of Roger Moore, one of the biggest names in Hollywood in the 1970s, and now the star of the documentary From Roger Moore With Love.
Shrugging off infidelities, going suit shopping with Michael Caine, filming some of the most iconic scenes to grace the silver screen - the documentary can’t make the case that it was a boring life.
“I admit in my personal life, I was no saint,” the actor says. “Professionally, on the other hand…”
From Roger Moore With Love will be broadcast on BBC Two on Christmas Day at 9pm.
(A selection of gifts from the official 007 store website. Picture: 007store.com)
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