John le Carré's The Looking Glass War: Imagining the Special Operations Executive – Secret Intelligence Service Rivalry as Post-war Counterfactual History

Smith, James

doi:10.1080/02684527.2022.2151756

John le Carré's The Looking Glass War: Imagining the Special Operations Executive – Secret Intelligence Service Rivalry as Post-war Counterfactual History

Smith, James

Authors

Professor James Smith james.smith3@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Published in 1965, John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War was met with little of the acclaim given to its predecessor, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In this article, I propose an alternative reading of the novel, suggesting that it is embroiled in long-running debates within the British intelligence community, specifically the rivalry that occurred between the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Secret Intelligence Service in WW2. Through this, this article explores how le Carré’s novel drew on SOE source material, and how it became part of the wider contest over post-war perceptions of the SOE.

Citation

Smith, J. (2023). John le Carré's The Looking Glass War: Imagining the Special Operations Executive – Secret Intelligence Service Rivalry as Post-war Counterfactual History. Intelligence and National Security, 38(2), 218-231. https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2022.2151756

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Oct 26, 2022
Online Publication Date	Dec 13, 2022
Publication Date	2023
Deposit Date	May 20, 2022
Publicly Available Date	Mar 28, 2023
Journal	Intelligence and National Security
Print ISSN	0268-4527
Electronic ISSN	1743-9019
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	38
Issue	2
Pages	218-231
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2022.2151756

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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.