JAMES LONGED TO STAR IN A BOY’S OWN ADVENTURE BUT ENDED UP ON A ‘ HOLIDAY TO HELL’
TV filmmaker who put war zones behind him to escape into a not entirely fictional world of black ops, spies and assassins
‘ A friend worked in a special ops unit and told me a lot of detail on how the killing is done’
AS A little boy, James Brabazon insisted his parents called him Danny, after the title character in Roald Dahl’s book, Danny The Champion Of The World – a boy who enjoys audacious adventures with his father, and who eventually saves the day for them both. “I wanted to live his fictional life so much,” reflects the novelist and Oscarshortlisted documentary filmmaker. “Up until that point, books had been like looking out of windows. Suddenly it was like an open door and you’d walk into the world.” Though they are now close, as a youngster James didn’t see much of his father after his parents divorced, so Dahl’s book was compelling reading for a boy missing his dad. “The idea of a father figure who would take you on adventures and that ultimately you, as a child, would save your father is an immensely compelling myth,” says Brabazon, 48. “The book also showed me a world where it’s okay to break the law if there is a strong moral reason.” This fascination with morality and Boy’s Own adventures was to serve Brabazon well during his restless travels through more than 70 countries, making 21 films for Channel 4’ s Unreported World series and five documentaries for its Dispatches series, in such edgy places as Liberia, Somalia, Syria and Ivory Coast. And it continues to fuel his new career today as a novelist specialising in a rigorously researched world of espionage, covert intelligence and off- the- books special operations. SAS author Andy McNab had high praise for his debut action thriller The Break Line, calling it “outstanding”. Brabazon’s second novel, Arkhangel, has just been published; the story of British government assassin Max McLean who officially doesn’t exist, and what happens when a routine hit goes badly wrong. It may be fiction, but Brabazon insists the details are underpinned by hard facts gleaned from his high- level special ops contacts. “One of the great things about my job was being lucky enough to meet the craziest cast of characters, some of whom became lifelong friends,” he laughs. “A lot of them worked for intelligence agencies or military intelligence. Others were mercenaries, criminals and soldiers. Some were good people; others were decidedly amoral at best. “But they would often divulge things off the record. A journalist never betrays their sources, but there came a point when I started to write fiction when I began contacting them and saying, ‘ How would you feel if I put this into a novel and changed the name and locations?’ In Arkhangel, there is a moment towards the end of the book where Max, who is Irish, is working out how to get out of Russia undetected. I contacted a friend who worked closely with the SAS and asked, ‘ If you were in Russia and needed to get out what would you do?’ “He gave me a list of realistic options and told me he’d been in precisely this situation. Another friend worked in a small Israeli special ops unit and was able to tell me a lot of the details of how the killing is done. Where to shoot someone, and what equipment to use, depending on whether you are in a field or a hotel lobby. While events in the book are fictitious, the methods are real.” Brabazon stopped short on one detail, unable to cross an internal line. “I wanted to make a child a witness to something Max does. My contact told me that in real life a child witness would be killed,” he says. “But I couldn’t write that. Although the detail is rigorously correct in every other regard, I needed to keep a vignette of respectability.” Perhaps he was thinking of himself aged seven, reunited with his father and taken by him on “crazy hitchhiking adventures across Ireland, to my mother’s horror”. With his little bag half- filled with his teddy, he and his father would stay in youth hostels and take turns to cook dinner. “Out of love for me, my father ate his way through a hundredweight of omelette and beans- on- toast. Of all the gifts he could have given me, working out how to fend for myself was the best.” The pair remain very close. Brabazon’s other inspiration was his grandfather Martin who told stories of derring- do in the jungles of Burma during the Second World War. An Irishman, and natural storyteller, he captivated the young James with “wildly inappropriate tales suffused with a higher moral purpose”. When Martin left the army,