Course Details

Whether called “The Great Game”, “the Second Oldest Profession”,or “Capital Sport” – as it was by the first head of British Intelligence in World War I (the model for James Bond’s “M”), spies and spying have always been with us. As fictional figures, however, spies only truly arrived during the last century. Now they parade across our literary landscape and our movie screens, a cavalcade of secret agents, assassins, moles, double-agents, counter-spies, bewildered (but patriotic) amateurs and dedicated (but cynical) professionals. During the quarter we’ll dip into this clandestine world of spy fiction and film and sample some of the exemplars of the genre, from Kipling to Le Carre.