CHARLES BEAUMONT

Charles is not his real name and the former MI6 employee won’t reveal it, so we can’t say for sure that he studied history at Oxford in the mid-1990s, but an intermediary confirms that he did.

Two decades across four continents in the pay of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but eventually it ended and then came COVID. During lockdown Charles wrote the novel he’d always dreamt of, A Spy Alone, and it was a huge success. The Financial Times hailed it ‘A highly accomplished novel from a writer of great promise.’

A Spy Alone was unforgettably Oxford-shaped, with early scenes walking you down the High, into Oriel Square and Christ Church through the back entrance by Corpus. At the centre, the indefatigable, slightly browbeaten hero Simon Sharman whose tradecraft as a British spy is second to none, yet who realises he is the plaything of malign forces even on the British ‘side’, in an era when it’s no longer clear who supports who, and where money matters more than ideology.

Ultimately, Sharman uncovers a spy ring, in Oxford.

Now Charles has penned a sequel, A Spy at War, (Canelo, 25 March 2025) where the murder of Sharman’s colleague Evie in the first novel leads him directly to Ukraine in search of the killer, a simple revenge plot that quickly becomes complex.

In both novels there are politicians who are recognisably based on real people, but short of the narrative becoming a roman-à-clef. Broadly, it is the Boris Johnson era of British politics in A Spy Alone, followed by a resurgent clarity of affiliation in A Spy at War.

Having gone to Kyiv and finding that he can still get a beer, Sharman reflects that Ukraine defending itself against Russia is ‘one of those good wars where you know whose side you’re on and you can still get a proper drink after work.’

That fictional complacency is short-lived, of course, but the point sticks. Sharman is out to find and kill Chovka Buchayev, a Chechen fighter who murdered Evie. His quest takes him right into a hot ambush situation on the frontline, capture by the Russians; unexpected rescue, and multiple further escapades.

‘This is commercial fiction; I am trying to entertain the audience. Yet I also want future literary and cultural historians to read this and say, ‘OK this was what was going on then, and the truth is there too.’

The carry-over from the first novel to the second, from uncovering an Oxford spy ring with Russian connections to pursuing a Chechen murderer in Ukraine amidst 'a brutal war of conquest', is completely logical and deliberate, Charles says, hinting later that his third novel will go right back to the earliest days of Putin’s rule over Russia to pinpoint the seeds of the current war.

The ‘hidden in plain sight’ quality of twenty-first century spying is also under the microscope in A Spy at War, entirely topical given recent revelations about Westminster spy rings, Bulgarian spies camped out in Great Yarmouth, and imprudent interactions between British royals and Chinese officials.

In one luminous passage, Sarah, a Christ Church don specialising in Slavonic languages and quietly advising the government on security matters to one side, (‘a fantasy figure who doesn’t exist but ought to’) reminds the reader that ‘spying’ is different in the 2020s.

‘Forget Minox cameras and dead letter boxes. What they [Russian assets] bring is political influence…it’s an alignment of interests, not some sort of agent situation. But the important thing to know is that they [fictional British politicians helping Russia] co-ordinate with Moscow. And sometimes they take instructions. I doubt that they’d accept that description, but it’s what happens.’

Charles is partly alluding to state-led ‘special actions’ designed to subvert the integrity of Westminster, powered by a wall of dirty money.

Elsewhere, the narrative runs right onto the terrain of MAGA in America, and even up to the point of a character asking rhetorically whether America might pull the plug on Ukraine – yet the novel was signed off months before President Trump’s re-election.

Charles says he is ‘not delighted to be proved right,’ yet pleased to have been so close to history, despite its ‘crashing return.’

‘Ukraine will be forced into a surrender deal. Russia will advance to a resting place and claim a great Imperial Russian victory. Trump was irritated at the mention by Zelensky of abducted Ukrainian children. The Russian bad tricks will continue unabated – people are forgetting the hybrid war grey zone stuff that Russia conducts all the time. That will accelerate, and it’s not confined to Ukraine.’

Is there a bit of him that is a historian?

‘Yes of course, but I signed the Official Secrets Act. Fiction is where I have to belong. Plus, most people don’t dutifully read the Economist every week but they might read this novel. Fiction is the best way to have a conversation with people about what’s going on.’

He attributes to his time at Oxford ‘education, life-long friends, and almost everything I subsequently did was informed by it at some level.’

I feel bound to ask on behalf of aspiring writers among Oxford alumni, how Charles crossed the immense chasm dividing Whitehall from novel writing.

His answers will encourage alumni of a writerly disposition.

Insisting there were no favours or mates involved, or friends of friends or nepotism, Charles says that it was sheer hard work to get a literary agent, without which you can forget getting published in any traditional sense. But the point here is that eventually he did, through persistence and stamina.

‘I wrote to over thirty [literary agents]. The vast majority didn’t even reply. It’s real work. You have to research the individual you are asking, find out who they are and construct your appeal to that person. It’s not a form letter.’

He found literary agent Michael Dean (at London agency Andrew Nurnberg) whose own background shared some elements of Charles’. Michael became, and remains, his agent.

‘The lesson is that it only has to come together once – but you have to do the work.’

Of course, you also have to write the novel at your own risk – you don’t approach an agent with an idea but with a manuscript. So it’s an inherently entrepreneurial, and lonely, venture.

‘At this point I know I can do it. With your first novel you don’t really believe it. With your second, it’s a slightly less terrifying prospect.’

Amidst walking the dog in London and making trips to far-flung locations to research the geography and the detail, Charles is now turning to his third work and we wish him luck.