When it comes to tradecraft – the techniques and technologies used in modern espionage – our minds often go straight to the not always entirely accurate (or plausible) rocket-firing cigarettes, grenade-launching pens and lazer-beaming watches from the spy films and shows we grew up on. Yet in real life, though some tradecraft is just as fiendishly clever, impressively high-tech and actually out-there as the gadgets and gizmos dreamed up by Hollywood, other examples represent far simpler, trusted techniques that allow agents to capture and share information efficiently and discreetly, with only a steel nerve and a cool facade required.
As Ben Macintyre, author of the New York Times best-seller upon which ITVX psychological drama A Spy Among Friends is based explains, the tradecraft practiced by agents such as Philby and Elliott is “not James Bond-y tradecraft. These are the very subtle signals and techniques that are essential to being a spy and living as a spy. It’s how it’s actually done.”
