The Spectator

GOODBYE, SHAYLER

If there is one matter of concern about MI5 to have come out of the Shayler case, it is that the organisation employed him at all

issue 09 November 2002

Besides secret agents themselves, who face assassination should their identities become known, no man can have been more grateful for the existence of the Official Secrets Act than Ian Fleming. Had it been known back in the 1950s that MI5 and MI6 were inhabited not by suave womanisers but by dull paper-shufflers who go home on the Tube, his books would not have prospered.

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