Spying and lying
In espionage or writing, you have to keep your stories straight, Ben Macintyre says
“Lying is a very difficult thing to do,” says Ben Macintyre.
He, perhaps better than most, should know. Over the course of a career now entering its fourth decade, the British author has carved out a successful and lucrative niche for himself writing about people who lie for a living: spies.
The realm of espionage, as depicted in the novels of Ian Fleming, for example, is generally considered to be romantic and adventurous; the reality, as evidenced from Macintyre’s nonfiction books, is far more mundane and messy. And then there’s the matter of not getting nicked, which is where the ability to lie consistently and convincingly comes into play. “One lie is a piece of cake,” Macintyre says. “Multiple lies, where you have to remember the last lie and make sure that your subsequent lie fits with it — that’s really difficult.”
It’s also, Macintyre agrees, a skill that novelists have to develop. “I think it’s no accident that many of the greatest fiction writers in Britain have been spies,” he says, mentioning in particular Graham Greene, W. Somerset Maugham, Fleming, and John Buchan.
As well as one other, a longtime friend of Macintyre’s who gave him a piece of writing advice he’s never forgotten. The late David Cornwell — better known to the world by his nom de plume, John le Carré — had a more cynical attitude toward MI5 and MI6 than Macintyre is willing to countenance, though he does credit le Carré with reinventing the modern spy novel, as well as helping him in his own career. “He encouraged me greatly,” Macintyre says, before laying out the piece of advice that has continued to stick with him. “I remember vividly he once said, ‘You’ve got to maintain jeopardy on every page.’”
This is especially germane in Macintyre’s latest book, “Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis’ Fortress Prison.” Telling the story of Allied POWs incarcerated in one of the most notorious German prisons during the Second World War may at first seem like a departure for Macintyre. Until, that is, one realizes how much ersatz espionage went on in the facility, from hiding stolen radios to devising a method for secreting a compass inside a walnut. That’s to say nothing of the coded messages that were sent in and out of the prison.
Of course, one major stumbling block for any writer trying to wring drama out of a historical narrative of this kind is that the outcome is predetermined. (Spoiler: the Allies win.) Which is where le Carré’s advice appears indispensable. “Particularly in nonfiction,” Macintyre says, “keeping the drumbeat going is absolutely vital. I do use novelistic techniques, but I never make any of it up.”
That in itself is remarkable given some of the material in “Prisoners of the Castle.” Descriptions of the prisoners’ multiple escape attempts involve digging a 140-metre long tunnel, known as the Métro after the French subway, which had its own ventilation and telephone system; attempting to construct a functioning glider to fly out under cover of darkness (a scheme that was never actually implemented because the camp was liberated before it could be attempted); and, in the book’s opening scene, trying to walk out of the castle disguised in a moustache made of brush bristles and a fake gun constructed out of cardboard.
How on earth did any of the prisoners who attempted these escapes think they were ever going to work? In Macintyre’s view, it was precisely the bravado with which they were undertaken that led to their potential success. “The more brazen the deception, the more extreme it is, the more your enemy thinks, ‘Well, they couldn’t possibly fake a whole moustache.’”
Descriptions of the escape attempts comprise the most adrenaline-fuelled sections of the book, but Macintyre is quick to point out that they account for a small part of life in Colditz, which was for the most part astonishingly boring. Both prisoners and guards faced tedium and hunger that were daily features of life in a dank, dark medieval castle. Though the location is remembered as the site of daring escape attempts (a number of which, known colloquially among the prisoners as “home runs,” were actually successful), the reality was much more desperate. “I think (planning an escape) was a way of holding off the darkness and the grimness,” Macintyre says. “Which didn’t really form part of the mythology of Colditz.”
Though he began working on the book before the world came to a standstill in early 2020, much of the research and writing was done during lockdown. Macintyre has no illusions that the edicts in effect during the COVID-19 pandemic were equal to what prisoners in Colditz experienced. “It’s a lot different sitting on your sofa and watching Netflix and ordering delivery to being in Colditz castle,” he says. “They’re completely different things.”
Macintyre’s gratitude at being able to tour “Prisoners of the Castle” in the U.S. and Canada has a fortuitous coda: after a busy fortnight of travel, he is returning to the U.K. one day early to attend the London Film Festival premiere of “A Spy Among Friends,” a British TV series featuring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce and based on Macintyre’s 2014 bestseller.
And after that? Macintyre is inclined to return to his roots by undertaking a book set during the Cold War, a period he feels is unavoidable if one wants to understand what is unfolding in Russia and Ukraine today. “The story of what happened in the Soviet Union and to the Soviet Union is absolutely central to what Putin is doing today,” Macintyre says. “There is a sort of hidden, secret story of the end of the Soviet Union.” It’s a story he seems perfectly placed to tell.