A fascinating insight into the reading habits of the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, comes via Iris magazine, house journal of the Iris Project, a fantastic charity that campaigns to get classics into schools. According to an interview with Evans about his classical education (he studied Latin and Greek at Bristol University), his favourite classical reading matter was Suetonius, author of scurrilous, occasionally filthy, biographies of the Roman emperors, the (also occasionally filthy) satirist Juvenal and the (almost always filthy) comic dramatist Aristophanes.
Asked about connections between his education and his current role, he replied: "MI5 needs people with good intellectual skills, the ability to spot connections, the ability to absorb and assess a variety of material. Natural ground for a classicist." He added: "There has been something of a classical tradition in the intelligence world. The retired officer who first interviewed me for a job in MI5 was a classicist." Evans also revealed he once even received a note from his boss written "in perfect ancient Greek". I do believe the makers of Spooks are missing a trick here: I long to see Lucas and Harry communicate by way of perfectly formed Greek hendecasyllables.
