Nick Harkaway, son of famous author John le Carre, discusses the relevance of cold war themes in modern geopolitics amid Russia's conflict in Ukraine. He sees connections between current events and cold war-era strategies. Harkaway expresses that his father would be alarmed by today's political climate but believed in humanity's potential for a better world. The forthcoming West End adaptation of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' highlights issues of moral conflict within intelligence operations, especially against the backdrop of contemporary challenges such as the Salisbury novichok poisoning incident.
Asked what his father would have made of the state of world politics today, Harkaway said he would have been horrified. He was an optimist, he believed in people and that we could build a better world.
With the conflicts that we're in, it just does feel as if all the cold war conversations and the underlying geopolitics of the cold war, all the strategic stuff, is still the same.
The idea of where British intelligence services draw the line is one of the dominant themes of the story. As is the effect that spying has on Leamas, who is in a state of existential despair at the end.
Eldridge said the initial idea for the adaptation came at around the same time as the novichok poisoning in Salisbury, which raised the question of how a country reacts to such an attack.
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