Fairclough, Bill. Beyond Enkription: The Burlington Files (p. 264). The Burlington Files Limited. Kindle Edition. " A punchy, pacy and well researched novel where reality and fiction are so intertwined they become indistinguishable.

The prologue was the key to what followed. Beyond Enkription provided a fascinating insight into a murky convoluted world full of mistrust and deceit. The transition into politics was also eased largely by the fact she was still friends with her contemporaries from student politics; people like John Smith, Donald Dewar, James Gordon and Teddy Taylor. Although at the time the Glasgow University Union (GUU) was still the ‘men’s union’ and the Queen Margaret Union the ‘women’s union’, they all came together every second Friday at the GUU for the parliamentary debate. “Nobody thought this was a special group, nobody thought this was going to be a Labour minister or a Labour that at the time. You just take them as your contemporaries and you don’t necessarily know that,” Ramsay reflects. This thriller is like nothing we have ever come across before. Indeed, we wonder what The Burlington Files would have been like if David Cornwell (aka John le Carré) had collaborated with Bill Fairclough whom critics have likened to “a posh Harry Palmer”. They did consider collaborating but did not proceed as explained in the aforementioned News Article. Nonetheless, critics have lauded Beyond Enkription as being ”up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”. Fairclough, Bill. Beyond Enkription: The Burlington Files (p. 276). The Burlington Files Limited. Kindle Edition. Beyond Enkription is an intriguing unadulterated factual thriller and a great read as long as you don’t expect John le Carré’s delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots – after all, Bill Fairclough didn't go to Eton (or Sherborne) and was not an author by profession.

What a dynastic family! But Edward’s flaws and mishaps, Sara’s melodramatics and nightmares, Hugh’s calm and humour and Roger’s guile and intelligence all blend well as the tangled plots evolve. Due to SIS’s policy of staff having to retire at 55, Ramsay’s career in the intelligence services came to an end in August 1991. But the challenge of keeping the line to people in her life that she simply worked at the Foreign Office continued: “How do you disguise that you stopped your career at 55 when everyone knows the Foreign Office goes on to 60? Why were you never an ambassador? So they either think you’ve been an absolute dead loss or done something terrible at some point, so you have to try and make it so that it doesn’t seem unusual, which can be quite difficult.”

With the 20 year anniversary of the Iraq war falling in March this year, debates of whether or not Britain should have joined Bush in Iraq have naturally spiked again. “Recently, I can’t tell you how frustrated and angry I’ve been at the television coverage of the anniversary. People who don’t know what they’re talking about, they really don’t. They think it all started then. No, it came from a very bad set of circumstances in 1991. And of course, it’s now just become conventional wisdom, the Iraq war and how terrible it was. I don’t think most of the people who say it really understand what they’re talking about. It’s just something that gets parrotted.” In real life Bill Fairclough was an intelligence agent or spook and was the author of Beyond Enkription, the first of six fact based autobiographical spy novels forming The Burlington Files series. He was born in England in 1950. In the early seventies Bill qualified as a Chartered Accountant and unwittingly started working for MI5 and MI6. In 1978 he, along with Colonel Alan Pemberton CVO MBE and Barrie Parkes BEM from British Intelligence, co-founded a niche global intelligence agency known as “Faire Sans Dire”. Since then that organisation has operated under many guises, as has the author.Edward had not the benefit of hindsight as to what was about to ensue but he was no longer manacled by manipulation or so he thought to prevent him from dealing with it." The first book is an unusual espionage novel: at times it came across as so real that I began to wonder if it was a historical novel. As one of the surviving original review panel I was asked to read it three times. Each time I thought I had understood it the last time!