For her male colleagues, Vincent, a Jewish codebreaker and Bennett White, her supervisor and handler, this does not pose a moral dilemma. In the course of the novel, Evelyn reaches a point where she must decide whether to betray her country and the principles she believes in, or a close friend whom she has always admired. Through Evelyn’s character we are not only shown the social development of a person capable of assuming different identities, necessary in espionage work, but also her moral development. She can become a different person very easily.” This person is adept at ingratiating herself with others, in particular the other girls at school and later university, and this proves crucial to her later recruitment to MI5. “The novel explores the ways Evelyn shapes herself into the kind of person she believes will succeed in life, as opposed to her ‘real self’, which is a young woman from humble origins. Plus childhood is a space that continually fascinates me, especially those formative years of early adolescence. When I asked Starford why she had included her character’s childhood in a spy story, she said, “Evelyn’s childhood is so crucial to how she develops into an adult primed for espionage that it seemed necessary for it to be in there. Stories about espionage rarely show the agent’s childhood. It is a rare look into the psychological and moral development of a spy. Rather than a tale of action, adventure, and intrigue, this is a story of psychology and ethics.
Women Exploited: An Unlikely Spy by Rebecca Starfordīeneath the calm, well-ordered setting of pre-war England so beautifully described by Rebecca Starford lies a world of judgement, deceit, and questionable morals: the world of espionage, and unquestionably a man’s world.īeginning with the title, everything about Starford’s novel An Unlikely Spy (Ecco, 2021) is unexpected.
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