"Accompanying the photo are two of his quotes. I am not a spy who writes novels, I am a writer who briefly worked in the secret world, one says. The second, after questioning whom, if anyone, we can trust, continues: What is loyalty to ourselves, to whom, to what? Whom, if anyone, can we love? And what is the caring individual's relationship to the institutions he services?"
"They are questions that had confronted him since childhood, with a mother who abandoned and lied to him and a father, Ronnie, a conman and fantasist who spent time in prison. Among the books that feature in the exhibition is A Perfect Spy, which he called the most autobiographical of his novels, whose central character, Magnus Pym, is obsessed with his father, Rick, a seductive fraudster."
The Bodleian exhibition titled Tradecraft presents David Cornwell's personal artifacts, manuscripts, and techniques tied to espionage. Visitors encounter a large portrait of Cornwell in a black bucket cap and two quoted statements about his brief time in the secret world and questions of loyalty and love. Childhood abandonment and a father who was a conman informed recurring themes of betrayal and spying. A Perfect Spy appears as the most autobiographical novel, featuring Magnus Pym's obsession with his fraudulent father. The display includes draft manuscript pages, annotated amendments, and early caricatures from Lincoln College, illustrating the interplay of life, tradecraft, and fiction.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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