What Can ‘Slow Horses’ Tell Us About Modern Britain?

John Le Carré wrote that the expression of a nation's subconscious is its secret service. The Apple TV dramatisation of ‘Slow Horses’ – the ‘Smiley’s People’ of its generation – begins its fourth series as one of the most successful streaming series ever. What does it tell us about the psyche of contemporary Britain?

Le Carré’s theory, or rather that of the actual author David Cornwell (and voiced through a character modelled on the famous KGB spy, Kim Philby), bears up to scrutiny. James Bond embodied a last swagger of confidence helping the Second World War generation process the indignity of austerity Britain in the 1950s and the ascendancy of American culture in the 1960s. The theme of betrayal that animated most of Le Carré’s work reflected the self-doubt of a nation resigned to its decline, and peaked in both popularity and literary quality in the 1970s. After the Cold War, Jason Bourne – an unrivalled human weapon that has forgotten its purpose – embodied the irony of the West in the unipolar moment. America at the apex of its power had lost an enemy, but not yet found a role. Jason – once he remembers who he is – ends up more preoccupied with resisting the conspiratorial caprice of his own ‘deep state’ agency than with any foreign threat. 

Bourne’s anonymity, his extensive passport collection and his linguistic disguises expressed something about the curdled mix of liberation and atomisation of the era that began with globalisation and ended with extraordinary rendition. Half a generation on from 2002, when the first Bourne movie came out, the Slow Horses instalment, ‘Real Tigers’ (2018) offers the following comparison with the heroes of bygone eras:

‘Bond would have leaped from the bridge onto a passing bus or drop- kicked a motorcyclist and hi-jacked his wheels. Bourne would have surfed the streets on car roofs or slipped into parkour mode, bouncing off walls and wheelie bins, always knowing which alley to cut through. River threw a quick glance at the nearby row of Boris bikes, shook his head and ran down into the tube station.’

Mick Herron, the author of the Slough House series of books, has been praised by fellow author Val McDermid as ‘the Le Carré of our generation’. Yet to apply Cornwell’s national psychoanalytic theory, we have to get a fix on the era and the key character. The world of Slow Horses (call it ‘Herron Land’) emerged from the Britain of David Cameron, whose election as prime minister in 2010 coincided with the publication of the eponymous first instalment of the series: ‘Slow Horses’. This was followed by ‘Dead Lions’ (2013), then ‘Real Tigers’ (2016), ‘Spook Street’ (2017), ‘London Rules’ (2018), ‘Joe Country’ (2019), ‘Slough House’ (2021), and finally, ‘Bad Actors’ (2022). Just as the TV series opened up a whole new audience in 2023, Cameron himself returned as foreign secretary. Whether you think of Brexit as an act of quixotic resurgence in the face of decline, or of international shame and corruption, it slouches heavily in the centre of this period. 

As for identifying the hero/anti-hero of the Slow Horses series, that is not such a simple matter. The agents of ‘Slough House’ have all failed in some mundane fashion: leaving a top-secret disk on the train, sending an inappropriate work email, making an error in a training exercise that embarrassed the service, or merely alcoholism, drugs and gambling (more dodgy high-street bookie than Casino Royale). The institution itself – ‘Slough House’ – is the creature of a dystopian human resources policy that tries to get these losers to quit MI5 by pushing them to the margins of the espionage world. [Can it be a coincidence that Ricky Gervais’ series ‘The Office’ was set in Slough?] Inmates are loaded down with a series of pointless and humiliating tasks under the direction of Jackson Lamb, superbly portrayed in the TV version by Gary Oldman.

Descriptions of Lamb – his farts and belches, soiled clothes, flamboyantly jaded anti-woke opinions and put-downs – make for some of the best passages of the books. There is a more conventional type of ‘hero’ character in the form of River Cartwright, a service blueblood who has blotted his copybook with the aforementioned embarrassing exercise. Earnest Cartwright turns out to be quite gifted in his profession, but Lamb is so much the richer character, it is hard to judge who represents the central figure. 

The dynamic between Lamb and Cartwright might offer a clue for the diagnosis of Brexit Britain’s subconscious. Cartwright is flawed, but his endeavours to redeem himself and escape the purgatory of Slough House represent an almost old-fashioned moral purity and a dogged refusal to be written off. His foil is Jackson Lamb, black sheep of the service. Lamb’s natural element is the late Cold War, and you get the sense his peacetime career was derailed by a too high professional merit and too low tolerance for bullshit – a toxic combination for a technocratic management culture. 

A sort of integrity, coloured by different generational circumstances, is what connects the two key figures. Can they rise above the bureaucratic pettiness of their service and curb the corruption of its venal political masters? Can they protect the realm, however indifferent its population has become? Has Britain still got it?

The spies of Slough House are all losers who don’t know when to quit. Is that what Slow Horses is trying to tell us about Britain today? Lamb’s cynicism is comprehensive and almost overwhelming, yet his meandering schemes are often rewarded with unlikely success. Lamb is decrepit, but still deadly when crossed. Could the same be said of Britain?

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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