The Sixth Column

by Peter Fleming

Wry and inciteful commentary on Post War/Cold War England, by the brother of spy novelist Ian Flemming. the bvook is a razor sharp send-up of the spy novel genre and so is a sybling triumph.

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Adventurer and travel writer. A brother of James Bond author Ian Fleming, he married actress Celia Johnson in 1935 and worked on military deception operations in World War II. He was a grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust and the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co.

Reviews

[David Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps if Ian Fleming and Auberon Waugh had written a book together, it might have read a bit like The Sixth Column - not a bad, light read but Peter Fleming is a much better at travel writing - News from Tartary still one of my favourites. The Sixth Column is good reading when slightly distracted.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before there was James Bond, there was...Boy Endover. Who?

Peter Fleming was known for two things: (1) Being the older brother of Ian Fleming, and (2) writing about his wide-ranging adventurous travels. He was a successful author in his own right, achieving his literary fame before Ian. In fact, if it weren't for his support of his brother, it is likely Casino Royale would have never been published, and the world would have never known James Bond, spy extraordinaire.

The Sixth Column, published one year before Casino Royale, was Peter's own whimsical take on espionage. The central character is the bad guy, one Paul Osney, an opportunistic go-getter who becomes the face of a new political party in Great Britain, who with the secret aid of the Soviets, is on the verge of gaining enough power to make Great Britain an ally of the Soviet Union. There are a host of good guys, so it is difficult to settle on one as the central good guy. If there is a central man of action, it is Boy Endover, an undercover agent who doesn't even show up until at least two-thirds of the way through the book.

There is very little action, but some cat-and-mouse activities, a fake bomb plot, and the final confrontation occurring on a new oversized passenger plane. Much of the book is filled with genteel, over-the-hill aristocratic types entangled in internal power struggles, usually amongst obscure intelligence agencies like M15 Section D2D (in charge of the security of light houses and the balance of nature) and something called H.2.0.

Overall, it's all just light-hearted fun for the reader, where even the appearance of flying saucers is a plot point.

[Steve Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great espionage story of undermining the system from within that demonstrates that Ian was not the only member of the Fleming family that could write thrillers.