DECEMBER BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION THREAD - Thursday's bookclub session and author chat here

[TillyBookClub]

Hi all, this is the discussion thread to come to this Thursday night 8-10pm for December's Book of the Month, Agent Zigzag. Author Ben Macintyre will be joining us from 9 onwards.

If you can't make the session and would like to ask Ben a question then do post it here now and we'll email it on. And if you want to post a question in advance pop it up here on this thread, and we'll email them to him. Ben will start with those on Thursday eve.

I'm hoarding the last of the pudding wine and Quality Street in anticipation (should be drinking something far more spy-like and sophisticated but never could stomach martini)

[TillyBookClub]

And Rupert Everett not really. I had a momentary vision of a sort of spy- spoof, him all brylcreem and dark moods, expansive gestures and drunken fabulousness. But RE obviously not nearly heterosexual enough.

Though there's a question - did Chapman ever direct that frustrated libido towards men?

Interesting how war favours the slightly crazy, heightened characters. The extreme situation must make their extreme personality suddenly relevant and useful.

[BenMacintyre]

I think the closeness of the Von Groening Chapman relation was a strange combination of self-interest, paternalism on VGs part, neediness on Chapman's, and mutual recognition that they were, despite their very differnt circumastances and upbringings. very alike...

[CarrieMumsnet]

Were you ever worried about keeping the suspense going given that the pics in the middle kind of give the game away that he survives the war? Not saying it wasn't suspenseful, but just wondered if it was a different challenge to keep it that way with non fiction rather than fiction?

and on a more frivolous movie note who would you get to play Graufmann (sorry if I've got that name wrong have lent out my copy and finished the book before xmas - I mean his German handler)

[BenMacintyre]

did Chapman ever direct that frustrated libido towards men?

Well, there had been incidents in his early soho years when he may have slept with men, possibly for money.

I think he was, fundamentally, neither hetero, nor homo, but omnisexual.

[sophiewd]

Just ordered Faramus' book for 1p as would love to know more about him, poor guy really was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[morningpaper]

Right here's another question: If you were going to be in that Guardian (shh) feature "A Place Where I Write" or whatever it is called, where they show a lovely picture of the writer's "working area", which things would you need to remove/change from your writing area?

[morningpaper]

OMG Sophie that will be DEPRESSING in extreme

[sophiewd]

Will let you know.

[morningpaper]

And here's another question: If you could read an autobiography from just one person in the Chapman story, whose would it be?

[ChampagneSupernova]

Good question MP

Ben, if your wife is working at the moment, does that mean you have to stifle creative urges and not think about your next project?

[TillyBookClub]

Just scooping up an earlier question and adding to it, did you have to check everything a hundred times, or have a rule about how many sources you had to have before claimign it as true?

So many elements of his story are fantastical, you must have been shaking your head in disbelief (the Betty Farmer discovery in teh restaurant is one example - just extraodinary). Were your journo instincts very useful here?

[BenMacintyre]

The suspsne is a good question. With a non-fiction book, I thik there is risk of violating reader's trust if one uses tricks to keep the suspense going atifically, as it were. Yes, the photos show that EC survived to old age, but the hope is that readers are sufficently intrested in teh tale to want to know how...I once wrote a book, non-fiction, in which the hero was killed on the first page, and the whole book was about the events leading up to that.

As for who should play Von Groening: there is that brilliant German actor who played the good German SS offcier in The Black Book and the main non-Stasi part in Lives of Others...can anyone remember his name? he would be brilliant.

[ChampagneSupernova]

Here's the cast list from The Black Book
which one do you mean Ben?

[BenMacintyre]

Clearing up:

one place to write? definitely Scotland, so damp, so inspiring

as for sources, unlike journalism, I feel less need to croso check. on the whole, if a historical character says or writes soemhting, I believe them, unless I have avery reason not to (which in EC's case was quite often)...as with journalism, in the end it is a judgement call

which autobiography? I would love to know if I got Von Groning's character right...alos I think the strange dancing SS offcier, Walter Praetorius, would have produced an inadvertantly hilarious memoir

[TillyBookClub]

Sebastian Koch is his name. (I found Herr Koch rather attractive and looked him up straight after seeing the Lives of Others). He'd be an EXCELLENT Von Groning.

[BenMacintyre]

Thanks Champagne supernova: i meant Sebastian Koch...don't you think?

[morningpaper]

Awwwwww Ben are you off? It's been lovely to talk to you and the book was huge fun. Well done. I'm deffo going to try another one of your books. Good luck with all the juggling.

[sophiewd]

Sorry being nosy again on Amazon, there seems to have been another book written about Eddie by Nicholas Booth which cam out approximately at the same time. Did you know this when you started or was it a bit of surprise. Have you read it asn is it vastly diferent from yours, written from a different angle

[TillyBookClub]

A couple of questions from lemurtamer, who couldn't make it this evening:

was there a lot more research material that would not have added more interest to the story, or was pretty much all the research used in the book?

Do you think the Germans may have won the war if their codes had not been broken? I haven't read any "If the Germans had won the war" fiction nor much about the code-breaking, but wondered what you thought.

[sophiewd]

Noooooooooo, I will never know the answer to my question.

[BenMacintyre]

sorry sophie, meant to answer this earlier:

From ChampagneSupernova

I have just seen on Amazon that there's another book telling his story by someone else but that yours was published first. How much did that annoy you?

At first, it annoyed me a very great deal. But in a way, it was inevitable: once the material had been released, there was no way I would be the only one to know about it (although I later got MI5 to release more material exclusively to me). In the end, however, having two books out at the same time really did both of us some good, I think. One or two literary editors had the books reviewed together, and having two books I think made people sit up and pay more attention.

[sophiewd]

Thank you, it has been great chatting with you and thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us

[Notyummy]

Thanks Ben, and Tilly for organising. Very interesting!

[TillyBookClub]

And we'll probably begin winding up now too, as Ben has been heroically answering questions for over an hour. Ben, would you have time for jsut the last few queries? And then we will let you return to your vodka martini and Walther PPK.(I know you're a spy really; doing Paris and NYC for The Times nice cover, v clever...)

[ChampagneSupernova]

LOL at Ben The Spy with his vodka martini

Many thanks to you both TIlly and Ben