The policemen agreed they were living with a most peculiar fellow. One moment he
was reading classical literature in the original French and quoting Tennyson, and the next he would be discussing the best way to blow up a train.
Eccentricity is one of those English traits that look like frailty but mask a concealed strength; individuality disguised as oddity.
What is the use of living if you cannot eat cheese and pickles?
The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated.
War is too messy to produce easy heroes and villains; there are always brave people on the wrong side, and evil men among the victors, and a mass of perfectly ordinary people struggling to survive and understand in between. Away from the battlefields, war forces individuals to make impossible choices in circumstances they did not create, and could never have expected. Most accommodate, some collaborate, and a very few find an internal compass they never knew they had, pointing to the right path.