Paul Locksley, Foreign Office

In 2014, I decided to finally yield to my life’s calling. I began work on my first spy novel. It was a January morning, and I was walking to the station to catch the train into London Marylebone. David Cornwell, in the 1960s, used a different train line. But his literary career began in much the same way.

I needed a new name. I had chosen Paul Charles in the late 1990s, before Amazon was really anything much, so I was unaware that there was already an author with that name. Later on, I received an email offering to buy the film rights to my first book. It very quickly emerged that the email was intended for the other Paul Charles. And besides, Paul Charles writes speculative fiction, not espionage.

As well as a new name for myself, I needed a name for my spy. I wanted him to be modern but not too modern. I wanted him to be nothing like George Smiley, in years or approach. He had to be of his time, but less so. I came up with the name Paul Locksley. It connotes Robin Hood, it connotes to me only, my first family home, and the first name I especially like.

It quickly became apparent that Russia has been done, too many times. So I picked Iran as being my theatre. Iran, or Persia, is often misunderstood in the West, much as Russia is and always has been. My late aunt, also a writer, was a pretty good Russian specialist and was fluent in the language, as well as in French and German. The German should have been a clue to my own history, but it passed me by at the time.

But nobody in my family knows much about Iran, other than that the women are all completely beautiful. So I picked a school girl for my sidekick. This would bring in all kinds of options, whilst at the same time harking back to my inspiration, John le Carré, who based many of his best scenes in public schools. Mine was a girls’ school, obviously, whereas his were all the boring boys’ schools of the type he himself attended.

I then brought in the girl’s parents, and another teacher, a French teacher who uses the name Maria Leclerc. Another thin reference to John le Carré of course. Maria Leclerc is not her real name, obviously, but this is not known until the second book.

Now, in March 2017, Locksley returns. A new chapter of his life opens after they flee to Hong Kong. Which is also the setting for the best and virtually unknown book in the Karla trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy which has never yet been filmed or staged anywhere in the world.

Locksley will return.