The single most terrifying moment of my adult life occurred at 8.55 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday 5 August 2008. I had a written a novel, Typhoon, in which disenfranchised Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province riot against the Han government. By coincidence, a few days before publication, large numbers of Uighurs started doing exactly that, in a curious real-life echo of the book.
James Naughtie had read Typhoon and wanted to get me onto the Today programme to talk about it. It was like receiving a royal summons. But as the minutes ticked down towards the interview, I was transformed into a pitiless, gibbering wreck, so nervous of making a fool of myself on national radio that I was tempted to bolt for the door.
Naughtie could see he had a problem. With practised skill, he eased into the Green Room, coated me in jokes and flattery, then led me into the studio for a conversation that passed in a blur and seemed to go without a hitch.
When it was all over, we talked about spy thrillers. It turned out that Naughtie is an aficionado of the genre and, in particular, a lifelong admirer of the works of John le Carré. Now the veteran broadcaster has written his own thriller, The Madness of July, drawing on nearly 40 years of experience as a journalist on the frontline of politics, diplomacy and espionage.
The protagonist is Will Flemyng who, despite the symbolic weight of his surname, bears scant resemblance to James Bond. Our hero may once have been a spy, but Flemyng is now a minister in the Foreign Office, carrying a secret from his past that will unravel over six sweltering days in the mid-1970s.
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