Fine Chaps Doing Jolly Good Things

Readers of a certain age may recall the Spycatcher affair, wherein the memoir of a retired MI5 officer received some welcome worldwide publicity thanks to the Thatcher government's attempt to suppress it. The author's barrister, Malcolm Turnbull, who went on to become prime minister of Australia, has expressed staggeration and bogglement of mind at the lies and perjury of the old bag and her henchbeing, some of which were finally thought safe to reveal last year. Thirty-two files still remain classified, and it must warm all democratic British cockles that we are permitted to know exactly how many files there are whose contents our masters will not permit us to see. Turnbull nevertheless professes to consider the hypocrisy extraordinary, which given its country of origin seems remarkably naïve. Anyone finding anything extraordinary in British hypocrisy, of any magnitude whatever, must have spent their life virtually on the other side of the planet.