Welcome to the latest Irish Times Books Podcast, an interview with Mick Herron, the author of the Slough House series of spy novels. Herron is originally from a working-class background in Newcastle but went on to study English at Oxford, where he still lives. Described as the John le Carré of his generation, he has created the bestselling Slough House series which features a rogue’s gallery of spies who have screwed up or been stitched up and are as a consequence desk-bound – “less MI5, more 9 to 5”. Presiding over them is the magnificently monstrous Jackson Lamb, a brutally insensitive, belching, boozing, Falstaffian figure who makes their lives a misery but ultimately has their backs. The latest book in the series, Slow Country, is one of the best so far, tightly plotted, wittily written and as a bonus a pitiless portrait of Brexit Britain. Herron shares his views on the current political drama gripping the UK as well as his influences and writing methods.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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