“... invented a spy-ring. To populate it, he says, he invented characters and gave them names from Evelyn Waugh novels. In filling out his ‘bald and unconvincing narrative’, Cooper was drawing on the cultural resources available to a public school-educated, middle-class Englishman. To Cooper’s surprise, his interrogators found his invented account ...”

“... to be a listener and a bad one to be a talker, so I’d followed that ethos to the letter. It was Evelyn Waugh who said that when a writer is born into a family the family is over. And why would it be any different when a second family comes to call? Julian wanted a brother, a friend, a PR guru, a chief of staff, a speechwriter, and he wanted that person ...”