Iron Curtain Call – How The Spy Who Came In From The Cold still tells the ugly truth about espionage

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

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News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John le Carré was still a working secret agent when he wrote The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, the book that shocked the Britain of 1963 with its portrait of espionage not as heroic but as sordid, morally compromised and utterly without glamour. In comparison James Bond’s escapist world of girls and gadgets seemed naive and shallow. As a new stage adaptation of The Spy opens, its playwright David Eldridge talks to Andrew Harrison about adapting le Carré’s deep, dark vision for 2025 – why he expanded the role of George Smiley – and what The Spy has to say about the West’s new Cold War with Putin. • The Spy Who Came In From The Cold runs @sohoplace Theatre in London's West End from 17 Nov-21 Feb, ahead of a major UK tour in 2026. Tickets are available from https://spyonstage.com/ • We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to indeed.com/bunker for £100 sponsored credit. www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Andrew Harrison Producer: Liam Tait. Audio production by Robin Warren. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's quite a lot of ads on our podcast these days. We need them to pay for our team.
0:04.0	But if you find them a little distracting, annoying maybe, there's a simple solution. Back us on
0:08.9	Patreon. That means no ads and uninterrupted listening. Follow the link in the show notes to find out
0:13.8	more. Hello, it's Andrew Harrison here. This edition of The Bunker comes with support from
0:19.0	Ancestry, the online database that helps you discover your family history. We're coming up to Remembrance Day, and it's a time when a lot of us think about what our families were experiencing during the war. Both of my granddad's fort in the Second World War. One was held prisoner in Italy, and for a while my nan didn't know whether he was alive or dead. The other was in the tanks and he never spoke much about it.
0:39.3	I feel like I ought to know more about what they and their families went through.
0:43.1	So Ancestry is doing something special over the remembrance period.
0:46.6	They're giving free access to selected global wartime records
0:49.8	so you can begin to discover what your family did on the frontline and the home front.
0:54.7	Register with ancestry and until Wednesday the 12th of November, you can access 6.9 million
1:00.5	wartime records from around the world for free. You can see the detail of Army service records
1:06.0	and casualty reports, historic photos and records from the home front too, so you can discover stories
1:11.6	of courage and resilience in your family.
1:14.2	Register at Ancestry.co.com.uk or search Ancestry.com.uker to start your free searches.
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