The popular historian Ben Macintyre is a fortunate fellow. No sooner has the BBC’s acclaimed adaptation of his account of the SAS’s wartime birth Rogue Heroes wrapped up, than on 8 December ITV launches an equally lavish drama series, A Spy Among Friends based on another of his bestsellers – the story of Soviet super spy and arch traitor Harold ‘Kim’ Philby.
The difficulty with parachuting fictional women into the stories of mid 20th century war and spycraft though is that their presence would have changed everything
Both series largely stick to the facts meticulously recorded by Macintyre and feature real historical figures. Rogue Heroes is populated by square jawed chaps like David Stirling, Jock Lewis and Paddy Mayne who founded the SAS and got their jollies careering round Nazi airstrips blowing up planes. A Spy Among Friends, set in the same era, has goofy upper class SIS/MI6 spooks in suits and bars failing to twig that their chum Kim is a double agent working for Stalin.
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