Wasn't the Cold War great? Anybody under thirty must be totally bewildered by spies coming in from the cold. They've had to create ever more unlikely baddies for James Bond to fight because the 'evil empire' is no more. Today in 1963, Kim Philby, the 'third man' disappeared in Beirut. He was the 'third man' because the 'first man' was Guy Burgess and the 'second man' was Donald Maclean (I hope you're following this because I
will be asking questions later). MI5 was full of men, mostly recruited from Cambridge and often leaning to the left.
Personally, I thought Orson Welles' version of Philby was near perfect and what he could do with a zither could make your eyes water. Or have I got that wrong? These spies are very tricky people, as I am sure you know.
In other news ..
There are some things you just shouldn't promise. Especially of you can't deliver; every parent who has ever let their attention wander as Christmas approaches knows this. Sometimes broken promises are bigger than those involving a newbikeanahamsteranatigerarealtigernotatoyonelikelastyearanda ... we've all broken that one or something like it, usually inadvertently, but take as cases in point Marshal Ney, who promised to bring Napoleon back to Paris in a cage; in fact, he defected to him. Adolf Hitler promised not to invade any more countries just before he went into the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia etc etc. But the most spectacular of all was Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter. 'Geniuses don't die,' he said. 'I'm going to live forever.' Except he didn't, dying today in 1989.
Who knew?
