Delightful seems a strange word to begin a review about a book about the dark art of espionage, but Alexander McCall Smith’s splendid THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SPIES is just that. Delightful.

Imagine Buchan or Ambler as written by Wodehouse and you get an idea, as McCall enchants us with five stories of spies and spying spanning a century of shady shenanigans, of sleepers, sneakers and snoops.

From Algiers in 1924 to Rome in 2022, McCall trawls the facts and fictions of the clandestine world and fashions them into exceedingly entertaining yarns, the more outlandish of which possibly contain more than a modicum of truth.

The story, Nuns & Spies, was conceived of a common legend from World War II that purported the parachuting of German spies were dropped into England dressed in wimples and veils.

McCall has a ball recalling this legend and putting his own delicious spin on it.

Secret service sisters may well be a part of the Vatican intelligence apparatus, but the intriguing tale told in Filioque, is peopled with enigmatic eminences and surreptitious priests. Heresy and treason abound in this recondite tale, with cagey clergy swapping cassock and crucifix for cloak and dagger. Talk about a confessional!

“Imagine Algiers in 1924”. That’s the opening line of Syphax and Omar, an absurd tit for tat tinker, tailor, soldier spy story with elements of N.F.Simpson.

In the cautionary tale, Ferry Timetable, a fit of pique triggers treason and trickles through to a bizarre response with a depiction of defection stranger than fiction.

Donald and Yevgeni is the most straight forward story in this collection, factually based on Burgess and McLean and Philby. It contains a delicious pun on the classics with Burgess uttering Eheu fugaces, labuntur martini (the martinis are slipping by). Could be a classical Bond quip!

Immensely entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable, this gently comic cache of clandestine stories is well worth uncovering.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SPIES by Alexander McCall Smith is published by Abacus Books