Tower and Town, September 2021

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Mick Herron And His Latest Book Slough House

For a while now, authors have been vying to take on the mantle of John le Carré as Britain’s finest spy writer. Step forward Mick Herron, whose acclaimed Slough House series has cemented the Oxford-based writer as a worthy successor. Dripping with sardonic wit and mordant humour, the books skewer the contemporary world of Brexit Britain and the far right with the same skill that le Carré captured the Cold War.

Herron’s greatest achievement is the creation of Slough House, a world-weary office of worn furniture and ancient filing cabinets where MI5 spies are sent when they mess up. Known as ‘slow horses’, these floundering misfits and failures resolutely cling on to their jobs, despite the menial, humiliating tasks they are given. And they are overseen by one of the funniest creations of modern literature, Jackson Lamb, a Falstaffian figure whose misanthropy is only surpassed by his flatulence. Lamb, though, is also a sharp operator, a former Cold War field officer who is fiercely protective of his beleaguered employees. George Smiley he is not, but he is equally memorable. So too is Herron’s own le Carrésque lexicon. There are ‘the achievers’ (those who break down doors), ‘the dogs’ (MI5’s internal security officers), ‘the stoats’ (surveillance officers), as well as ‘Regents Park’, MI5’s HQ, where the slow horses dream of one day returning.

The seventh book in the series, the eponymous Slough House came out in January, and Herron will be talking about his brilliantly named cast of characters, including River Cartwright and ‘Lady Di’ Taverner, at this year’s Marlborough LitFest. Will he reveal the real-life inspiration for Peter Judd, the MP whom he describes as “a bulky man, not fat, but large [with] the schoolboy looks and fluffy-haired manner that had endeared him to the British public”? Who can he possibly be thinking of? These books might be funny, but they are also thought-provoking, holding a dark mirror up to modern Britain. It will be fascinating to see how Gary Oldman portrays Jackson Lamb in the forthcoming Apple TV series.

John Stock