The Lady Magazine

6 February 2015

We Brits love our spooks. Can we ever get enough of John le Carré’s George Smiley? Or Ian Fleming’s 007? They’re currently making the 24th Bond film, for goodness’ sake and that doesn't even include the 1967 spoof Casino Royale and the 1983 remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again. Perhaps it’s because naturally we’re a rather secretive nation. We like to play our cards close to our chests. We love puzzles, clues, enigmas, detective work. Colin Firth is no stranger to the spy game: he played suave Bill Haydon in the big-screen adaptation of le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But now he’s back, as an even more dapper spook in Kingsman: The Secret Service, for which he was required to do an awful lot of training – and yes, it did involve more than just sipping Martinis and climbing in and out of Aston Martin sports cars. ‘I was learning to use parts of my body that I’d never used I didn’t even know they existed,’ he confesses to The Lady on page 10. There’s plenty more glamorous intrigue on page 20, where Sir Christopher Ondaatje tells the story of The Last Courtesan, Pamela Harriman, and plenty more intriguing glamour on page 14 with our peek inside the hallowed workshops of Savile Row, favoured by gentleman spies everywhere. And don’t forget that next week is our 130th anniversary edition please sing us a chorus of Happy Birthday, wherever you are. Until then,