With all the spies in the news, this is a timely update by a spy's son (and so much more).

UPDATE March 2018. Melbourne University Press has issued an updated edition (with a new cover) and a wonderful piece at the end "In Memory of Mark Colvin" by his great friend and colleague, Tony Jones. Tony tells of Mark's broadcast that inspired him to set his sights above the local newspaper and get into foreign correspondence work.

Tony shares a bit of their long history together and his own insights into the man so many Aussies loved to listen to. He sat with Mark during his last days, and this is a fitting tribute to his irreplaceable friend.

If you have a Kindle of e-book copy, you should get the update automatically.

I'm still thrilled with the tweet I got from @Colvinius after I posted my review! https://twitter.com/Colvinius/status/850240956502757381

UPDATE May 2017. Mark Colvin, The Incomparable, has died, and the ABC has countless tributes to him here. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-12/let-me-tell-you-a-story-about-mark-colvin/8517888

What a delight to be allowed into Mark Colvin’s unique and fascinating life. He has a memory from when he was two years old – TWO! – peering out the back window of a car as they left their home in Austria. And he has many other memories of his very early childhood, moving around with his British “diplomat” father, his Australian mother, and later his little sister. (I, on the other hand, have an embarrassing lack of recall.)

Young Mark developed a very early love of books, and as an adult, spent a lot of money shipping books back home from the US, where there was so much more available. (The postal service did well before Amazon, eh?)

“Reading, I could somehow see immediately, offered you freedom and adventure without the accompanying danger. You could travel to volcanoes and treasure islands, under the sea or into space, laughing or crying, all while sitting on the sofa or lying on the carpet with your chin propped in your hands.”

((Which is exactly what makes this book so much fun for me!)

I’m not going to attempt to discuss his life and extraordinary friends and relatives, other than to say many of us would be happy to name-drop, as he does “my mother’s great-aunt Ethel and her husband, the former Australian prime minister Stanley Bruce. ‘Uncle S. . . ’” THAT sort of name. But ‘Uncle S’ is hardly a far-fetched claim-to-fame that some might think. He stood in for Mark’s grandfather (Bruce and his wife had no children), took Mark’s mum around Europe and gave her away at the altar. THAT kind of relationship.

Colvin grew up with telephones, tape recorders and, sometimes, diplomatic bags. When he was amongst the first on the scene at the 1977 Granville train disaster (a horrific bridge collapse onto a passenger train in Sydney), there were no public phones free in the area.

“I was just a guy with a tape machine. You knocked on doors and begged people to let you use their phone, promising to pay for the call. Then they watched aghast as you took their phone apart and connected it with alligator clips to your tape recorder . . . . It was a dark and terrible day, but I learned from it for the first time that I could, single-handedly, cover a really big and difficult story without falling to pieces.”

He could easily have fallen to pieces during his hair-raising travels around the world, including Mongolia, countless war zones, and Russia. His stories are even more special because he’s such an intelligent, well-read man who knows and appreciates the history and the culture of where he goes. He’s also a knowledgeable music lover, so music features often.

Of course it’s the spy stories that have probably piqued the public's curiosity the most.

Born in 1952, Mark grew up during the Cold War era, so like many Western children, he was made aware of the threat of Russian spies. Of course, what he tells us now has been learned or gleaned later from research or after his father opened up a bit when things became declassified or when he trusted Mark’s discretion.

Mark certainly hasn’t been indiscreet, but the stories are terrific! This is from 1955 when Kim Philby, the famous double agent was technically “cleared” (although everyone knew he was guilty). But he had very strong defenders still in the service who said Philby simply couldn’t be guilty because he’s “one of us”.

I enjoyed this entertaining bit about the questioning of one of Philby’s closest friends (presumably by another equally friendly interrogator).

“You can get the flavour of this way of thinking from the transcript of a vetting session with Nicholas Elliott which has appeared in more than one intelligence history of the time:

‘Security Officer: Sit down, I’d like to have a frank talk with you.
Nicholas Elliott: As you wish, Colonel.
Officer: Does your wife know what you do?
Elliott: Yes.
Officer: How did that come about?
Elliott: She was my secretary for two years and I think the penny must have dropped.
Officer: Quite so. What about your mother?
Elliott: She thinks I’m in something called SIS, which she believes stands for the Secret Intelligence Service.
Officer: Good God! How did she come to know that?
Elliott: A member of the War Cabinet told her at a cocktail party.
Officer: Who was he?
Elliott: I’d prefer not to say.
Officer: Then what about your father?
Elliott: He thinks I’m a spy.
Officer: So why should he think you’re a spy?
Elliott: Because the chief told him in the bar at White’s [exclusive gentlemen’s club in London’s St James’ Street].’”

He goes on to say

“Espionage is a form of licensed villainy: burglary, blackmail and bribery are tools of the trade, and with a few exceptions almost everybody is greedy for money.

My father told me one story of his time in Vienna, about an assignment on which he was a third-party observer of an exchange between a CIA agent and an Eastern Bloc informant, at an outdoor restaurant by a lake. The informant had brought a briefcase full of documents. The CIA man had brought a case full of greenbacks. My father was looking down from a table on a slightly higher terrace when, as the men opened their respective cases, a sudden, violent gust of wind blew up. Documents and dollars fluttered into the air, towards the lake. ‘And you know what?’ grinned my father. ‘Both of them grabbed for the dollars.’ ”

He’s had enough involvement covering historic events and politics to fill another book, and then there’s the changes to journalism, radio, and television during his time working on papers, ABC’s iconoclastic 2JJ (Double J), and Four Corners. There seems little of any importance in this area he hasn’t been a part of, and uppermost has been fact-checking right up to the last moment before broadcast!

No longer able to gallivant about the globe, Mark Colvin’s voice and Twitter feed are well-known to Aussies, and thank goodness for that. He reckons he’s pretty good at triangulating stories to check veracity. I was taught to find three sources for information, and they must not reference each other. Colvin is a reliable source.

Thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Press for the copy for review from which I’ve quoted. Thanks especially to Mark Colvin for writing this.

Some links:
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/mark_colvin.htm

@colvinius "Presenter of PM, ABC Radio. Lifetime Lance-Corporal in the Awkward Squad"