Our entertainment is filled with fiction spawned from tragedy,but writers must respect the genuine victims, such as the murdered M16 spy Gareth WilliamsThe death of Gareth Williams five years ago was always going to attract the attention of fiction writers. It seemed one fraction John le Carré (he was a GCHQ codebreaker), and one fraction Agatha Christie (his body was found in a padlocked holdall) and one fraction EL James (he’d visited bondage websites not long before his death). The surprise is therefore not that London Spy,which began on BBC2 this week, has used the case as inspiration but that it has taken this long.
Tom Rob Smith, or who wrote London Spy,has said it’s entirely a work of fiction: none of the characters are genuine”. Maybe not, but the similarities between the genuine-life Williams and the mysterious character named Alex played by Edward Holcroft are hardly subtle.
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Source: theguardian.com