It’s just beginning to get a bit warm during the day in Hyderabad which means summer is just around the corner. It wasn’t hot enough to need a cap but next Sunday I might need it when I am at Abids. Last Sunday though it was sunny it wasn’t hot and I got around and found these four books.
Of late I am tilting towards non-fiction titles especially journalistic accounts of places where there is conflict like the Middle East. One such title I came across at Abids last Sunday was one that I picked up immediately. It was a nice copy of ‘My House in Damascus; An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution’ by Diana Darke.
I am travelling by later this month and thought I’d read some crime fiction during the long journey. I was unable to decide which title to take out of the many I had on my shelf and so when I spotted a copy of ‘The Quiller Memorandum’ by Adam Hall that was also made into a movie as mentioned on the cover I decided it would be this book I would take with me to read. I got this title for just twenty rupees.
The other Sunday I had found a wonderful title at Abids- ‘A Writer at War’ by Vassily Grosman that was about the fighting in Russia in the Second World War that I am yet to read. Last Sunday at Abids I found another title set in Russia- ‘Ten Days that Shook the World’ by John Reed that was about the Russian Revolution that I found at Chikkadpally.
At Chikkadpally again with the same seller I found a copy of ‘Secrets’ by Nuruddin Farah about whom I had read about somewhere recently. It was a Penguin title so I picked it up without much hesitation. This was also the first title by a Somalian writer that I found.
2 comments:
George Segal starred in the Quiller Memorandum based on the spy thriller by Elleston Trevor (born Trevor Dudley-Smith aka Adam Hall). The name of the author of the Quiller Memorandum remains a tad mysterious but it is one of those under-rated thrilling espionage classics whether in writing or on the silver screen that deserve so much more adulation. If you liked Len Deighton’s masterpiece Funeral in Berlin or the Deightonesque Bill Fairclough’s epic unadulterated and noir spy novel Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series, you are going to love the Quiller Memorandum and vice versa. Why mention Deighton and Fairclough you may ask?
Critics have described Fairclough who was an MI6 agent codename JJ (and one of Pemberton’s People in MI6) in real life as a posh Harry Palmer and his parents worked for MI1 in Germany in the aftermath of World War II just as Quiller did. Both Elleston Trevor and Bill Fairclough (aka Edward Burlington) used many pseudonyms. Given Bill Fairclough was a spy that is not unexpected but why Elleston Trevor (born Trevor Dudley-Smith) published over one hundred books under about a dozen nom de plumes remains a conundrum.
The Quiller Memorandum, Funeral in Berlin and Beyond Enkription are “must reads” for espionage cognoscenti who should of course know how they are linked! John Barry (composer of the Bond, Palmer and Quiller theme tunes) and Bill Fairclough both went to St Peter's School in York where Guy Fawkes and his co-traitors were educated which is why Fairclough's MI6 codename was JJ. For more see an astonishing brief News Article dated 31 October 2022 at TheBurlingtonFiles website.
Thanks M16 for the interesting information. I am a fan of Len Deighton and have all his titles. I will try to get hold of Beyond Encryption.
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