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According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, male writers have daddy issues. So keenly do they feel the oppressive influence of their forefathers that when they take up the pen it is to use it as a sword. To produce something new, they must engage their predecessors in a writerly duel to the death. Bloom’s examples are all very highbrow – Blake vs Milton, Keats vs Shakespeare – but the theory applies across the literary spectrum. When William Boyd sits down to write a new spy novel and, removing his pen from its sheath, looks up to assess the field, it is (among others) the faces of Ian Fleming and

In June 2022, Vladimir Putin tipped up at a party at the headquarters of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. This was to mark, of all things, the centenary of the country’s programme of deep-cover spies, who live for years abroad under elaborate false identities while passing secrets back to their masters at home. The weirdness of that espionage hoopla, just four months after the invasion of Ukraine, leaves one wondering what other bizarre birthday events Putin might have in his diary. The 85th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky, perhaps? Ah, you can imagine the banter. The cracker hats. The roll-out noisemakers. Yet it’s not out of the

Since it became independent in 1929, Vatican City has been the world’s smallest state. Every evening the gates close, leaving behind only 500 permanent residents. I once spent a week behind the walls as a guest in the Santa Marta hostel where the Pope lives; at night the deserted courtyards are thrillingly spooky. But it’s during the day that they echo with the footsteps of secret agents. The Vatican has been teeming with spies since popes started living on this 100-acre plot of land west of the Tiber when they returned from Avignon in 1377. In the 20th century it entered a new era of espionage when the papacy was

The best espionage novels cater to our fantasies while still persuading us of the authenticity of their worlds. Of the titles published this year, two stand out in the field, and each author understands that, in fiction, veracity is not the same as authenticity. In Hemingway’s words: ‘All good novels have one thing in common. They are truer than if they had really happened.’ An extended chase, beginning in Siberia, is a kind of Russian version of The Thirty-Nine Steps White Fox (Bantam, £18.99) is the concluding volume of a trilogy of thrillers by Owen Matthews, one of the best of many western writers on Russia. It can happily be