A Game of Moles: Deceptions of an MI6 Officer [Hardcover]

This interesting memoir was written by someone brought up in Mediterranean Spain, his father the director of a mine. This unusual childhood brings to mind the words of Smiley in one of le Carre's books: "...from just such unusual circumstances do we find suitable recruits." Trilingual in English, Spanish and French, when war came in 1939, the young man (ex-English school and Cambridge University, where he was a rowing Blue) was obviously likely to find himself in some kind of position where his languages would assist. Of course, Spain being neutral after the Spanish Civil War, he could have just stayed there, but young blood and ideas of what is the honourable path, etc, took over. Eventually, not long before the Fall of France, he entrained through the Basque country and Paris for England.

In England, Bristow was eventually recruited as a soldier but before very long told he would be working on something secret and was taken in a car to St. Albans, where the driver eventually introduced himself to Bristow as Kim Philby, of the SIS Iberian Section...

Bristow spent much time during WW2 in Gibraltar, but also, in the course of events, in Algiers and elsewhere. He displays huge bitterness not so much at his own treatment by SIS, but at the reward (meaning lack of or no reward) given others who not only served, but were usually more brilliant than what Bristow calls .." at London head office. Several were dispensed with after the war, without money or career hopes. Bristow himself was kept on after 1947 (following a short interlude as an Essex farmer), but was unknowingly surrounded by pro-Soviet agents or sympathizers: Philby, Footman et al, all the pseudo-brilliants of that time and place. He even met Burgess, whom he detested. Most of this lot were totally anti-Franco, but Bristow writes that he recalled the poverty and unrest of Spain before Franco; the latter had at least brought prosperity and kept Spain free of both WW2 and excessive American control after that War.

In this book, as with so many of the more honest spy memoirs, one realizes as reader just how pointless and useless most of the "security and intelligence" business was and is. A self-perpetuating mutual admiration society (rooted in small Oxbridge societies?) and composed of those who probably could not get into a truly meritocratic career structure (if there is one). Bristow is quite frank about the sheer mediocrity of many he knew at MI6 (SIS) and MI5 (Security Service), Dick White for one (MI5, later Chief of MI6). Yet there are several books saying (however implausibly) that Dick White was "brilliant" (a favourite tag for the more senior security/intelligence penpushers): see his biography, A Perfect English Spy, or the outpourings of Nigel West (Rupert Allason).

Bristow joined De Beers and kept up his farming activities, after leaving the secret world in the 1950's. He was brought back once for a typically expensive (thanks, taxpayers) and mismanaged SIS stunt that didn't work (quelle surprise...). The other latter event which interests in the book is his connection with Peter Wright of Spycatcher fame. He met Wright occasionally in the 1950's (both commuted on the same train too) until Bristow left and Wright was pushed out with £2,000 (albeit worth perhaps £150,000 in 2005) and no pension. When travelling in Tasmania much later on, Bristow calls in on Wright, who is living in a three-room shack in a snake-infested swamp. Thanks, England, thanks a lot, MI5.

In an England where myths of brave, clever secret service agents still hold sway, most of which myths are of pure literary invention (Ian Fleming, John le Carre) bearing no likeness to reality at all, this book is of no little merit and significance.