The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Better Hope

Anthony Hope, John Buchan, Erskine Childers, and Eric Ambler stole my youth, or at least its imagination. They taught me two important things: that rumours were probably true; and that the world was culturally English (or wanted to be). The first piqued my boyhood interest in conspiracy; the second provided reassurance that conspiracy would be thwarted by virtue. Both these things turned out to be false. But I have no regrets about believing either.

No one seduced me more effectively into the British Empire and its self-image than Ambler. His characters carry the Union flag like a beacon into the murk of foreign intrigue. They mingle but never assimilate. Their integrity is tempted but doesn’t waiver. Local cultures are appreciated, but with a certain off-hand dismissal of unfortunate inferiority. What Ambler writes about of course never existed, never for the nation and rarely for its citizens. But it does represent a cultural ideal which is mightily attractive to a twelve-year old, and even now to an old man.

The England of Ambler and all the others disappeared forever shortly after The Mask of Dimitrios was published in 1939. The Empire not long thereafter. Nevertheless the ideal lives on in their books, one of educated awareness, self-contained confidence, and a certain poise which might be mistaken for courage. It is to be regretted, I think, that this ideal was to be transformed into the likes of Fleming’s James Bond and the scheming denizens of Carré’s London Centre. Or am I just yearning for youthful hope?

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