This present book about the various intelligence services is written in the brisk "instant-history" style, which is now adopted by experts on current affairs all over the world. Apparently it makes a story more authentic if we are told that it was raining slightly or that the agent had dark-brown hair. I do not care for this sort of thing. James Bond or Harry Palmer make better reading, without needing the effort to relate them to real life. The book also keeps us in a breathless urgency, as though the authors were carrying the good news from Ghent to Aix.,,

One can range over the whole record of espionage from Babylon to the present day, and nowhere can one discover any project so pointlessly farcical as the subsidizing by the CIA of so-called highbrow periodicals. From the start everyone, except apparently the editors, knew that the money came from the CIA. But why worry? The periodicals in French, German, and English, provided quite interesting reading, and Vespasian had dismissed the other scruples long ago: pecunia non olet. I used to write for Encounter myself once in a while and often enjoyed the articles in it. The innocent and indignant should reflect that, if it were not for the CIA, Encounter would never have come into existence. Instead of raising a howl, we should demand that the KGB also contribute. After all, double agents seem to be a British speciality.