John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War: imagining the Special Operations Executive – Secret Intelligence Service rivalry as post-war counterfactual history

Abstract

ABSTRACT Published in 1965, John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War was met with little of the acclaim given to its predecessor, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In this article, I propose an alternative reading of the novel, suggesting that it is embroiled in long-running debates within the British intelligence community, specifically the rivalry that occurred between the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Secret Intelligence Service in WW2. Through this, this article explores how le Carré’s novel drew on SOE source material, and how it became part of the wider contest over post-war perceptions of the SOE.