Spycatcher [book]

Right. I finished this book about a month ago, but it's taken me a while to get round to the write-up.

This is the book that got banned in the 80's. I picked it up at a charity book stall.

It's actually very interesting. Very detail-heavy though. But if you have a mind that's fascinated by such detail, you'll learn lots and be quite shocked at quite how much gets revealed.

The tone of the book is intriguing too. What starts off like a history lesson, actually builds up in tension as one particular theme gathers overriding importance - namely, the possible presence of a high-up mole in MI5.

This is where the book gets personal. For while Peter Wright is very detached and descriptive in the most part, it's very difficult not to see things through his eyes. It's also where it gets a bit personal for me, because the Director General of MI5 at the time was Roger Hollis, the father of Adrian Hollis, who was my tutor at Oxford Uni. And not only that, Roger Hollis is also the person That Peter Wright clearly is convinced was a spy for the communists.

Reading something so controversial is enthralling enough. But knowing someone who must have been affected by the book's publication makes the speculation, that all the book's readers must go through, much more intimate...