Beyond Enkription - The Burlington Files

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If you’re an espionage cognoscente you’ll love this monumental book but just because you think you know it all don’t surf through the prologue: you may miss some disinformation. If you felt squeamish when watching Jaws, you may find the savagery of the opening chapter upsetting, but it soon passes. If you are into crime/espionage thrillers do read the fact based spy novel Beyond Enkription. It comes highly recommended by an American critic as “being up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”. It’s the first of six stand-alone autobiographical spy novels in The Burlington Files series based on the life and experiences of Bill Fairclough aka Edward Burlington (MI6 codename JJ as for Guy Fawkes) while working as an agent for MI6, the CIA et al for circa 50 years (see https://theburlingtonfiles.org) after attending St Peter’s School for his MI6 induction program!

The prologue was the key to what followed. Beyond Enkription provided a fascinating insight into a murky convoluted world full of mistrust and deceit. Due to SIS’s policy of staff having to retire at 55, Ramsay’s career in the intelligence services came to an end in August 1991. But the challenge of keeping the line to people in her life that she simply worked at the Foreign Office continued: “How do you disguise that you stopped your career at 55 when everyone knows the Foreign Office goes on to 60? Why were you never an ambassador? So they either think you’ve been an absolute dead loss or done something terrible at some point, so you have to try and make it so that it doesn’t seem unusual, which can be quite difficult.” The transition into politics was also eased largely by the fact she was still friends with her contemporaries from student politics; people like John Smith, Donald Dewar, James Gordon and Teddy Taylor. Although at the time the Glasgow University Union (GUU) was still the ‘men’s union’ and the Queen Margaret Union the ‘women’s union’, they all came together every second Friday at the GUU for the parliamentary debate. “Nobody thought this was a special group, nobody thought this was going to be a Labour minister or a Labour that at the time. You just take them as your contemporaries and you don’t necessarily know that,” Ramsay reflects.I could go on and on but am not going to inflict any more of this on myself or anyone else. The non-existent editing and sloppy excuse for writing in this book are an embarrassment to the writer and an insult to the reader.

Ramsay welcomed me to her flat to talk about what it was like being part of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and her involvement in the New Labour, as well as to reminisce on her time as a student at Glasgow with some of the figures who would go on to become big names through those years. From her endearing and gentle nature, urging me to take a biscuit from the selection she’d laid out on platters, it would be hard to guess this woman was once believed to be in the running for chief of MI6. Although her meticulousness in making sure my cup of tea was made to my liking might be indicative of the type of character that led to such a successful career. The first sentence of the Goodreads blurb (above, and probably written by the author) should be a warning:Though Ramsay’s early politics may have been influenced by Glasgow Uni, a member of the debating society where her contemporaries were the likes of John Smith and Donald Dewar, she insists this was not the case for her career in intelligence. Some journalists have suggested circles Ramsay was involved in during her time at university, particularly in her role as President of the Scottish National Union of Students, were CIA and MI6 fronts used to recruit for the intelligence services – a claim Ramsay dismisses as rubbish. “It had absolutely nothing to do with Glasgow University. Sometimes people ask because they’ve read all these things about Oxford and Cambridge tutorials, the classic idea from all these novels and things. That your tutor tapped you on the shoulder. At Glasgow University we didn’t have tutorials and glasses of sherry and people tapping you on the shoulder.” I noted with curiosity that judging from her book shelves, she does seem to enjoy a spy novel herself. On the real way she was recruited, the former MI6 Case Officer simply explains she was abroad at the time, and the Ministry of Defence spoke to her.

A punchy, pacy and well researched novel where reality and fiction are so intertwined they become indistinguishable. However, the CIA has a representative on the Joint Intelligence Committee and is therefore already aware of Edward’s exploits and capabilities. They turn him into their asset within 48 hours of his landing in Nassau. Well, he thought so but no doubt the CIA would have different manacles for him. No matter what it would be a change and MI6 had told him to have a rest and both were proverbially speaking the same."Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 in the heart of the disco fevered 1970s, the Cold War and the escalating Irish Troubles in the purportedly united British Isles. Baroness Meta Ramsay’s career since graduating from the University of Glasgow has not been short of drama nor prestige. Since her days frequenting Gilmorehill as President of the Student Representative Council (SRC), Ramsay has seen a lot – from working as a spy in the Nordic states during the Cold War to being an important part of the Labour Party in the House of Lords during the Iraq War. Apart from running Faire Sans Dire for over forty years, Bill has also worked as a bean counter in both practice and industry. During his career he has been a director and executive of several renowned international businesses (in the Barclays Bank Group, the Reuters Group and Citigroup). He’s trod on the tails of many fat cats and investigated and despatched some household name villains over the decades.