CANR
WORK TITLE: Enigma Girl
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
LAST VOLUME: CANR 222
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1953, in Worcestershire, England; married Liz Elliot (editor); children: two daughters.
EDUCATION:Attended University of Manchester.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Editor. Sunday Times, London, England, editor; Vanity Fair, New York, NY, London editor.
AWARDS:Ian Fleming Award for best thriller, 2005, for Brandenburg; Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, 2019, for Firefly.
WRITINGS
Writer of a political column in the London Observer; contributor to newspapers, including the Guardian, Evening Standard, and Telegraph.
SIDELIGHTS
British journalist Henry Porter writes a political column for the London Observer, and, according to his Web site, has been addressing the threat to rights and liberty in Britain since 2005. When Porter and Prime Minister Tony Blair engaged in an e-mail debate, their correspondence was published in the Observer. Porter makes his home in London, but he can frequently be found in New York, as he is the London editor for Vanity Fair magazine.
Porter is the author of a number of espionage thrillers. In an interview with Danuta Kean posted on the Orion Publisher Group Web site, Kean noted that Porter’s stories have “the ring of authenticity for a reason. ‘I know a lot of spies,’ he says as if it is the most natural thing in the world. ‘I have done some work that is not entirely journalism but not espionage,’ he adds darkly. ‘How shall we say, basically it is legal work and you get to know people.’”
Porter’s novel Remembrance Day features protagonist Constantine Lindow, an Irish-born molecular biologist from Boston, who is working on a research project in London. He is to meet his brother, who is killed as Lindow watches by a bomb that destroys a bus. There is the possibility that his brother was an agent of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the carrier of the bomb; as his survivor, Lindow is suspected of being involved in the plot. The only man who believes him to be innocent is Commander Foyle, who heads the antiterrorist unit of Scotland Yard. Lindow buries his brother in Ireland, then returns to Boston where he and a female double agent enter into an affair. They locate the assassins in the Maine woods, and Lindow returns to England, where Foyle is continuing the investigation.
Ronnie H. Terpening, who reviewed the book for Library Journal, praised Porter for his research, complex plot, intrigue, and use of technology, and he described Remembrance Day as “a dazzling story of unusual insight that concludes with a heart-pounding manhunt.”
A Spy’s Life is the first volume featuring Robert Harland, a former agent with the British secret service who is now working for the United Nations (UN) as a water inspector. When a private UN plane crashes at La Guardia Airport in New York, Harland is the only survivor. Alan Griswald, who had been sitting with Harland, had been investigating war crimes against the Bosnians for the War Crimes Tribunal, and the UN secretary-general asks that Harland continue his investigation. He is soon targeted with threats and an attempt on his life. The ghosts of Harland’s past reappear in the form of a son he did not know he had, the result of a 1975 affair with an agent of the Czech security service. Tomas Rath, who has damaging information, is anxious to get in touch with his father, and soon his mother appears, as does her former husband, a KGB agent who once tortured Harland. Harland is faced with a multitude of mysteries and questions of who is working for whom and who can be trusted as the plot of this thriller unfolds.
“Porter has the deft touch of a spy handler,” commented a Publishers Weekly contributor. Terpening commented that the story “never flags despite a labyrinthine plot.” Spectator reviewer Graham Stewart wrote: “Right to the very penultimate page, these are the doubts and fears that keep up the suspense in a thrilling, actionpacked story of deceit and double- dealing—the very essence of a spy’s life.”
In Empire State, the head of the U.S. National Security Agency is assassinated at Heathrow Airport in London, an airport employee and his family are found dead, migrant workers are gunned down in Macedonia, and a New York City osteopath is send two postcards showing the Empire State Building. These are the seemingly unrelated events that call for Harland to employ his skills and consider what they mean.
Harland is now working for both the UN and M16, and in Brandenburg Gate, published in England as Brandenburg, the Berlin Wall is about to come down, and the Stasi, the East German secret police, are calling back former agent Rudi Rosenharte, now an art historian, because they believe he can obtain information they need from his former lover. Rudi must cooperate, since his twin brother, Konrad, and family are being held hostage. Rosenharte travels to Trieste to meet the woman he knows is not Annalise, who committed suicide years earlier. Unaware of the imminent fall of the Wall, he does everything in his power to get his family to safety in West Berlin.
Spectator reviewer Andrew Taylor wrote: “The resulting intrigue is stuffed to bursting with ingredients—the KGB, the CIA, Arab terrorism, an ancestral schloss with aristocratic Nazis and even Greenham Common protesters.” Taylor noted that Porter’s cast of characters includes Vladimir Putin, who in the story is with the KGB. Booklist contributor David Wright commented: “Porter pushes all the right buttons in this solid spy novel.”
Kean wrote: “As Porter’s many fans have come to expect, nothing in Brandenburg is straightforward. Not only is the plot a complex web of Cold War scheming by everyone from Western secret service agents and the KGB to Muslim terrorists, but it foreshadows the War on Terror, dissecting the complicity of the Cold War protagonists in the rise of Al-Qaeda.” Kean continued: “ Brandenburg has a strong sense of place. Porter’s evocation of the paranoia and darkness that permeated East German society under Communism is chilling. Growing up, he spent time on German army bases, where he heard about the ‘grim frontier’ between the East and West from family and friends. ‘I’d like people to be reminded of what East Germany was like then,’ he says.”
Porter is also the author of The Master of the Fallen Chairs, a fantasy for young readers. It is a story in which a painting shows thirteen chairs, eleven of which have been toppled, each signifying a death. Two chairs remain. The narrator is Kim, an orphan who lives with his guardian at Skirl, the ancient house of the Drago family. After a servant girl goes missing, to their door comes Iggy, a strange young man who claims to be a relation. He and Kim become friends in a house within a house filled with an assortment of characters both living and dead.
In reviewing the book in the London Guardian, Philip Ardagh found the most intriguing character to be a great auk who was killed in 1844 and brought to Skirl to be part of its natural history collection, stuffed and nailed to a board. “Later on she’s chatty—very chatty—and at pains to make it clear that she’s the last of her kind,” wrote Ardagh. “How is this possible?” Ardagh felt that this is a story that can be enjoyed by everyone. “There are elements of adventure, suspense, murder mystery, magic and fantasy firmly rooted by characters one cares for.” His only regret was that because this appears to be the first of a series, enough is unresolved that the reader is left wanting more. The book, is in fact, the first volume of a trilogy.
A London Observer contributor, who “adored the great auk,” concluded the review by writing: “This is a winter’s tale for sophisticated children and their parents—full of pale skies and whirling rooks (with a friendly nod in the direction of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol). And Porter writes with such imaginative zest and warmth that I felt, as I read on, as if I was pulling a chair up to a fire and would have enough to absorb me until spring.”
In 2009 Porter published the novel The Dying Light, which was released the following year in the United States as The Bell Ringers. Former British spy Kate Lockhart has retired to New York and works as a lawyer. She is distraught to hear that a former lover was killed in a terrorist bombing in Colombia but begins to question some oddities in the story and unusual behavior immediately before his death. As she begins to investigate the attack, she uncovers clues he left behind indicating that high-ranking British government officials were involved in the plot.
Washington Post Book World contributor Patrick Anderson commented: “This is a sophisticated, engrossing and important political thriller. Porter wants us to see that the same technological tools that can be used to fight terrorism or to make government more efficient can also, in the wrong hands, be used to destroy freedom.” Anderson suggested that “perhaps Porter’s most important updating of Orwell is to show how corporate money might work with political corruption to create a dictatorship behind a democratic facade.” Writing in the Dallas Morning News, Alan Cheuse jested that “the refrain from the stalker’s love song, ‘Every Breath You Take,’ by the Police, might serve as the epigram for this gripping new British thriller.” New Statesman review Tristan Quinn opined that “though it is occasionally didactic and not always subtle, this is nonetheless a timely cautionary tale.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews noted: “While the narrative occasionally bogs down in details, the prose sings, and fully fleshed characters unraveling a compelling mystery provide more than enough momentum to power through the slow bits.” Booklist contributor Thomas Gaughan likened the novel to “both a page-turning political thriller and a grimly believable warning against a burgeoning surveillance state.”
[OPEN NEW]
After a decade-long break, Porter returned to fiction writing by launching a new espionage series centered on Luc Samson (called Paul Samson in later installments in the series). Samson used to work for the British MI6 agency, and he became a private investigator after he left. In the series opener, Firefly, MI6 has reached out to Samson to help track down a thirteen-year-old Syrian refugee named Naji. Naji has inside information on ISIS terrorist plans, and he has set out to Europe for safety. Samson has to track him down and earn his trust before ISIS killers reach Naji first. The book won the 2019 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.
Don Crinklaw, in Booklist, appreciated the book’s “bravura passages” and particularly praised its final fifty pages, describing them as featuring “rousing action” and an “especially haunting confrontation with the ‘results of pure evil.'” A writer in Publishers Weekly called the book “impressive,” praising Porter for how he “excels at describing the life of trekking migrants.” They also appreciated the novel’s “lively ending” and predicted that readers will find “much to admire.”
White Hot Silence, the second book in the series, also focused on refugees and those who work with them. Anastasia is a Greek aid worker helping in the refugee camps in Greece. When she stops to assist two African migrants, she realizes only too late that she is about to be kidnapped. Her Mafia captors want to blackmail her billionaire husband for information he has. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities are planning to throw him in jail for his past activities. It is up to Paul Samson to find Anastasia, but that is complicated by the fact that he is still in love with her.
In Booklist, Jane Murphy described the book as a “frighteningly realistic political thriller.” She recommended it for fans of the “darker side of the genre.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly called the book an “intricate tale of international financial skullduggery.” They praised Porter for his ability to handle the complicated plot with “keen intelligence and compassion,” and they recommended the book for those who want “plenty of action, excellent writing, and credible, convincing characters.”
The third book in the series, The Old Enemy, finds Samson trailing an employee of an environmental organization when Samson is almost assassinated. Not only that, but other people with whom he is connected, including Robert Harland (from the “Robert Harland” series) and Denis Hisami (the billionaire in White Hot Silence) have turned up comatose or worse. Samson realizes he is likely to be targeted again, so he heads to Estonia, where Anastasia (also from White Hot Silence) joins him. There, Samson discovers what Harland and Hisami were working on, and he works to uncover those behind the attacks.
Bill Ott, in Booklist, wrote, “Porter makes brilliant use of material ripped from today’s headlines.” Ott called the book “riveting,” and he also appreciated the “moving love story” and the book’s “stunning finale.” A writer in Publishers Weekly described the book as “complex” and “elaborate,” noting that it will satisfy fans of the series.
Porter found a new protagonist in The Enigma Girl. Slim Parsons is an agent for the British MI5 spy service, but she has been sidelined for being too violent. When she is finally given another job, it is to infiltrate a new media site. She is not particularly interested in that until she realizes it has connections to an infamous group of codebreakers. Meanwhile, a former target of hers is out for revenge, and her brother has gone missing. To add even more intrigue, someone else seems to be spying on her.
“Journalism and spycraft make for compelling bedfellows in Porter’s latest thriller,” wrote a contributor in Kirkus Reviews. They appreciated how Porter “never loses sight of [Slim’s] humanity and basic vulnerability.” In Booklist, David Pitt was particularly taken with the character of Slim, writing, “Once readers have met her, they won’t put the book down until they’ve finished it.”
[CLOSE NEW]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 1, 2006, David Wright, review of Brandenburg Gate, p. 74; January 1, 2010, Thomas Gaughan, review of The Bell Ringers, p. 48; September 15, 2018, Don Crinklaw, review of Firefly, p. 27; August 1, 2019, Jane Murphy, review of White Hot Silence, pp. 32+; April 1, 2021, Bill Ott, review of The Old Enemy, p. 29; December, 2024, David Pitt, review of The Enigma Girl, p. 111.
Books, March 22, 2000, review of Remembrance Day, p. 21.
British Book News, February 1, 1985, review of Lies, Damned Lies, and Some Exclusives, p. 79.
Dallas Morning News, February 21, 2010, Alan Cheuse, review of The Bell Ringers.
Economist, June 19, 1999, review of Remembrance Day, p. 3; December 4, 1999, review of Remembrance Day, p. 4; July 7, 2001, review of A Spy’s Life, p. 107.
Entertainment Weekly, April 14, 2006, Thom Geier, review of Brandenburg Gate, p. 92.
Globe & Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 1, 2001, review of A Spy’s Life, p. D14; October 25, 2003, review of Empire State, p. D27.
Guardian (London, England), April 16, 2008, Philip Ardagh, review of The Master of the Fallen Chairs.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2000, review of Remembrance Day, p. 325; December 15, 2009, review of The Bell Ringers; December 1, 2024, review of The Enigma Girl.
Library Journal, April 1, 2000, Ronnie H. Terpening, review of Remembrance Day, p. 131; March 1, 2002, Ronnie H. Terpening, review of A Spy’s Life, p. 140; March 1, 2006, Ronnie H. Terpening, review of Brandenburg Gate, p. 79; November 15, 2009, Ron Terpening, review of The Bell Ringers, p. 61; July 1, 2010, Lisa Anderson, review of The Bell Ringers, p. 46.
Listener, November 22, 1984, review of Lies, Damned Lies, and Some Exclusives, p. 26.
London Review of Books, February 21, 1985, review of Lies, Damned Lies, and Some Exclusives, p. 3.
National Post (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), January 9, 2010, review of The Dying Light, p. 13.
New Statesman, November 2, 1984, Francis Wheen, review of Lies, Damned Lies, and Some Exclusives, p. 30; September 7, 2009, Tristan Quinn, review of The Dying Light, p. 46.
New York Times Book Review, June 18, 2000, review of Remembrance Day, p. 19.
Observer (London, England), October 28, 1984, review of Lies, Damned Lies, and Some Exclusives, p. 25; June 6, 1999, review of Remembrance Day, p. 11; July 22, 2001, review of A Spy’s Life, p. 15; September 7, 2003, review of Empire State, p. 17; April 16, 2008, review of The Master of the Fallen Chairs.
Publishers Weekly, March 27, 2000, review of Remembrance Day, p. 51; March 4, 2002, review of A Spy’s Life, p. 59; January 30, 2006, review of Brandenburg Gate, p. 39; December 7, 2009, review of The Bell Ringers, p. 35; August 6, 2018, review of Firefly, p. 48; July 1, 2019, review of White Hot Silence, p. 43; April 12, 2021, review of The Old Enemy, p. 51; November 25, 2024, review of The Enigma Girl, pp. 36+.
Reading Time, February 1, 2009, Jane Campbell, review of The Master of the Fallen Chairs, p. 35.
School Librarian, June 22, 2008, Michael Lockwood, review of The Master of the Fallen Chairs, p. 104.
Spectator, January 19, 1984, review of Lies, Damned Lies, and Some Exclusives, p. 28; August 21, 1999, review of Remembrance Day, p. 39; July 28, 2001, Graham Stewart, review of A Spy’s Life, p. 34; July 23, 2005, Andrew Taylor, review of Brandenburg, p. 39.
Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 1985, review of Lies, Damned Lies, and Some Exclusives, p. 114; August 13, 1999, Keith Jeffrey, review of Remembrance Day, p. 23; October 19, 2001, Sean O’Brien, review of A Spy’s Life, p. 23; October 16, 2009, Natasha Cooper, review of The Dying Light, p. 21.
Vanity Fair, April, 2006, Elissa Schappell, review of Brandenburg Gate, p. 106.
Washington Post Book World, February 1, 2010, Patrick Anderson, review of The Bell Ringers, p. C2.
Woman’s Journal, March 1, 2000, review of Remembrance Day, p. 20.
ONLINE
Henry Porter Home Page, http://www.henry-porter.com (February 10, 2010).
London Tat, https://www.tat-london.co.uk/ (May 14, 2025), author interview.
Orion Publisher Group Web site, http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/ (April 16, 2008).*
Henry Porter (journalist)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry Porter (born 1953) is an English author and journalist. He is a writer of award-winning thrillers and was, until 2014, a regular columnist for The Observer, focusing on civil liberties and the threat to democracy. He is also an activist, chairing the Joint Media Unit of the People’s Vote campaign (until 2019) and The Convention, which stages large scale political conferences. Until 2018, he was the British editor of Vanity Fair, a position he held for 25 years. He has written ten novels, including a children’s book. The third part of a quartet of thrillers, The Old Enemy, is due to be published in April 2021.
Early life
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Porter was born into a military family. His father was the fifth generation to serve in the King's Royal Rifle Corps. His early years were spent in Germany and a succession of Army camps. He was educated at a village school in Worcestershire, a prep school he heartily loathed, Wellington College, and the University of Manchester.
Activism and events
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In 2005, Porter set up the West London Tsunami Appeal, which, in two weeks, raised £70K that was distributed in areas devastated by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on 26 December 2004.
In 2008, Porter co-founded the Convention on Modern Liberty with Anthony Barnett. They co-directed the event, which was held on 28 February 2009 at the Logan Hall in London and in parallel meetings across the country. Speakers included the writer Philip Pullman, the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord MacDonald QC and Conservative MP David Davis and the former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith QC.
In November 2013, he part-funded and directed the Snowden debates at the Jarvis Auditorium in the Royal Institute of British Architects, London. The event was designed to explore the implications of the global surveillance disclosures by the NSA contractor Edward Snowden, published by, among others, the Guardian during the summer of 2013.
On 12–13 May 2017, Porter put on Convention on Brexit and the Political Crash at Central Hall, Westminster with speakers as diverse as Bob Geldof, Michael Gove, Akala, Alastair Campbell, and Jarvis Cocker. In 2018, he staged two similar events at the Emmanuel Centre in London.
Political positions
Porter describes his politics as centre-left. In the 2010 General Election, he was one of a number of well-known writers to support the Liberal Democrats, and, in the years running up to that election, he contributed to the party's thinking on the threat of intrusive surveillance and the ID card.
In 2016, he was strongly in favour of Britain remaining in the EU. On the day after the referendum, he wrote "As I explained to my Brexit friends in a blog post this week, I would be a very sore loser if we came out. I will be in mourning for a project that was as brave and beautiful as anything in European history".[1] He was later a member of the Labour Party and supported a progressive alliance to take the country forward after Brexit.[citation needed]
Awards
He was on the Orwell Prize's journalism shortlist for 2009 for his campaigning work on civil liberties at The Observer. His novel Brandenburg, set at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which he covered as a journalist, won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. Empire State and the Dying Light were shortlisted for the same award. Firefly, which is set on the migrant trail in 2015 and is the first in a quartet of contemporary thrillers, won the Wilbur Smith Prize for Adventure writing. The second book in the series, White Hot Silence, was nominated as one of the best thrillers published in the United States in 2020 in the Barry Awards.[2]
Personal life
Porter is married to Liz Elliot, Editor-at-Large[3] for House and Garden,[4] whom he met when they both worked at Private Eye magazine in the 1970s. They have two adult daughters. Porter is a keen artist and draftsman.[citation needed]
In 2015, he was surprised to find himself elected as the President of Cricket Club at Birlingham, Worcestershire, whose ground he inherited from his father Harry Porter in 2014.[citation needed]
Bibliography
Standalone works
Remembrance Day (2000)
The Dying Light (2009) (published as The Bell Ringers in the US, 2010)
The Enigma Girl (2024)
Robert Harland triology
A Spy's Life (2001)
Empire State (2003)
Brandenburg (2005)
Paul Samson triology
Firefly (2018)
White Hot Silence (2019)
The Old Enemy (2020)
Skirl trilogy
The Master of the Fallen Chairs (2008)
Henry Porter
UK flag (b.1953)
Henry Porter has written for most national broadsheet newspapers. He was editor of the Atticus column on the Sunday Times, moving to set up the Sunday Correspondent magazine in 1988. He contributes commentary and reportage to the Guardian, Observer, Evening Standard and Sunday Telegraph. He is the British editor of Vanity Fair, and lives in London with his wife and two daughters.
Awards: CWA (2005) see all
Genres: Thriller
Series
Robert Harland
1. A Spy's Life (2001)
2. Empire State (2003)
3. Brandenburg Gate (2005)
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Paul Samson
1. Firefly (2018)
2. White Hot Silence (2019)
3. The Old Enemy (2021)
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Novels
Remembrance Day (1999)
The Bell Ringers (2009)
aka The Dying Light
The Master of the Fallen Chairs (2011)
The Enigma Girl (2024)
This week's Tete a Tat is author, journalist and my father, Henry Porter. I will try and keep to the facts on this one as I could be in danger of swerving heavily off course. HP has been my father for 32 years, and my older sister's for quite a lot longer. He married our mother Liz Elliot 30 years ago - you do the maths. I believe us to be his crowning achievement, but it would be unfair of me to skip over all the other things he has been up to since.
For this, I went to the most reliable of sources: Wikipedia. I can vouch for its reliability, as some time ago I amended the omittance of his youngest daughter's beauty. I believe it went something like: 'his youngest daughter, Charlie Porter, has been likened to Helena Troy'. It was some time until my father found it and made me aware that Troy was not Helena's surname.
But back to the matter in hand. HP started on his road to journalism at the Liverpool Daily Post 'covering inquests, court cases, industrial tribunals, strikes and run-of-the-mill road accidents, hospital screw-ups and minor political skulduggery'. You can't pay for an experience like that! Sadly, due the closure of many local papers, this may not be an opportunity that presents itself to today's budding journalist. But I digress again. HP went on to work for many of the top newspapers in the country; he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, Princess Diana's Funeral, 9/11, The European Migrant Crisis, Civil Liberties, & Brexit. The trials and tribulations of the world don't cease to exist once he's closed his laptop, however. They sit in his mind until he has to do something tangible about them.
This first showed itself when HP set up the West London Tsunami Appeal, which, in two weeks, raised £70K that was distributed in areas devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Four years later, in 2008, he co-founded his first convention; the Convention on Modern Liberty, an event which acted as 'a call to all concerned with attacks on our fundamental rights and freedoms under pressure from counter-terrorism, financial breakdown and the database state'. It hosted over 140 speakers, including Fatima Bhutto, Philip Pullman, Dominic Raab & Brian Eno.
Following the Brexit referendum result, he set upon his second convention: the 'Convention on Brexit and the Political Crash'.
Although HP had help on the way, he was very much taking the two-day event's burden. He had put his neck on the line and rented a Central Hall (if you don't know it, take my word for it, it is vast). My sister and I went to help out on the day, and I can safely say that my tummy was in knots before we got there. My mother, I believe, only exhaled when I called her to say: 'PEOPLE ARE HERE, LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE HERE!'. We were a very proud trio! Gina Miller started proceedings followed by a host of diverse speakers - Bob Geldof, Michael Gove, Akala, Alastair Campbell and Jarvis Cocker. I cannot tell you how drunk we got afterwards.
During all of this, he had also been the London Editor of Vanity Fair, where he was for 25 years. His stories from this time have me in fits, and I hope that one day he can put them down on paper (heavily redacted). He has also written ten books, including a children's book (Master of The Fallen Chairs, it's a winner). He has recently completed the third book in his award-winning, Paul Sampson series, The Old Enemy, which will be released on the 15th April. Thankfully, HP has been stuck in lockdown like the rest of us or else I would never be able to catch him to do Tete a Tat, but as ever, I am so pleased that I guilted him into it!
Who Is the best animal you have ever met?
It’s a toss-up between a racehorse called Pearl’s Legend and Mr Bloggs, a spaniel who lived in the early 70s and was my constant companion in my late teens. He was the most enthusiastic, affectionate, heedless, crazy animal I have ever known.
Pearl’s Legend is a racehorse bred by my father which I owned with Dad in partnership. When he died I got his 40 per cent. I dreaded the training bills, but then suddenly the horse came into his own, and not only that – he became a fighter who would never give up. When he was overtaken in the last furlongs of a race, he'd claw back the lead and win, twice at Sandown and then, gloriously, at Cheltenham where he stormed up the hill to win a huge silver trophy. In his last proper race, which was at Huntingdon, he won by 20 lengths and he still holds the course record there for two miles.
What would your autobiography be called?
It is called Genes and Tonic, and it is being written.
Favourite Smell?
Sweet peas are hard to beat. Certain types of naturally made rope. Sackcloth. The smell of summer in the countryside when I get out of the car having travelled from London.
What is the worst job you’ve done?
There’s a lot of competition. The night shift on the M5 service station in the 70s when forecourt attendants, of which I was one, dispensed the fuel. The truck drivers always wanted a receipt for 25 per cent more fuel than they had paid for. This was before credit cards and sophisticated tills. They became very aggressive if you didn’t oblige.
Mending fruit boxes comes a close second, but the worst was operating a concrete crushing machine on a wartime airstrip that was being torn up. The noise and dust were punishing.
What article of clothing would you wear if your spouse didn’t disapprove of it so much.
There was a floral shirt of roses, which I liked a lot. It disappeared in mysterious circumstances. My wife denies all knowledge. She also becomes vague and attempts feeble diversions when I mention a brown check overcoat that had lost its lining. I would wear more floral shirts if I could.
Great film suggestion?
I love Barry Lyndon, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, Blade Runner, Cinema Paradiso and a very strange Italian film called Le Quattro Volte
Do you believe in Karma and have you got a nice story of just deserts?
I always liked the graffiti which I spotted in Hampstead a long time ago – “My karma will run over your dogma”. This story is more about revenge. I was on the Eurostar from Paris. A businessman got on after me and started shouting that I had taken his aisle seat. He was extremely rude. But it was true – I had. So I moved to the window seat. At length, he went off to the washroom. Drinks were served. I kept my ice in a separate tumbler and, when he returned, slipped the ice onto his seat as he lowered his bottom. He obviously felt nothing, but at St Pancras exhibited a wet patch on the seat of his trousers
Favourite Restaurant?
Volare in New York. It’s in a basement, a block from where I lived in Washington Square Park, the kind of place beefy cops and traders meet to punch each other's shoulders and talk sports and work. A TV plays above the bar, always a game of some sort. I dined there three times a week in the early 90s and usually chose parma ham and melon, followed by Tortelone Alla Panna. I went back a couple of years ago. Same barman, same clientele in the booths; same décor (casino velvet, mirrors and bright lights). The barman looks up and doesn’t miss a beat before saying. ‘Hey, Mr Parma Ham, what are you having to drink, sir?'
Do you like poetry?
Very much, I have several anthologies by my bed and a shelf of English poetry.
Favourite Day Of The Week?
It is still Friday even though I have not worked in an office for nearly 30 years. On Fridays, I used to walk from my office in midtown Manhattan to my place downtown and gloried in the excitement and expectation in the air as New Yorkers went home for the weekend.
Best Moment in your career so far?
Undoubtedly when Tony Blair’s office rang and suggested an email debate between us on the subject of civil liberties to be published in the Observer the following weekend. It was closely invigilated. We had exact word counts and strict time limits. It was a weird thing for him to do when he was meant o be running the country, but also gutsy. A few years later David Cameron followed suit, despite George Osborne advising against it. He needn't have worried – it was terribly dull.
What is the thing keeping you sane at the minute?
My good health, after one or two scares last year, and oil painting
Happy Place?
I am happiest by water. I think of lochs in Scotland, a wide, fast-flowing stretch of the River Hodder in Lancashire, a rock from which I used to expertly catch prawns by means of limpet on a hook when I was I boy in the Isle of Wight
A Song That Can Always Make Your Foot Tap?
"This land is your land" by Woody Guthrie. On Woody’s guitar, there was a sign which read "This machine KiLLS FASCISTS"
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Henry Porter's Firefly won the 2019 Best Published Novel. Firefly follows Naji, a highly intelligent 13-year-old Syrian refugee who is on the run from an Isis terror cell, and Paul Samson, MI6 agent tasked with locating Naji before his enemies do.
About the author:
Henry Porter was a regular columnist for the Observer and now writes about European power and politics for The Hive website in the US. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He has written six bestselling thrillers, including Brandenburg, which won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, A Spy's Life and Empire State, which were both nominated for the same award. His most recent thriller was the universally praised Firefly. Henry Porter is frequently described as the heir to John le Carré. Aside from his writing, Henry is a dedicated champion of civil liberties. He lives in London.
WNSF: What does adventure writing mean to you? Would you have considered yourself an adventure writer before being shortlisted for the Prize?
No, I don’t consider myself an adventure writer. What makes Firefly an adventure is Naji’s journey through the wild, mountainous landscape of Macedonia and the pursuit by Paul Samson and the Isis hit squad.
WNSF: Are there any particular books or authors which have made a lasting impact on you?
Yes, but they are generally not thriller or adventure writers. I have always greatly admired John Buchan, Mark Twain, Forsyth, Le Carré’s early books, Primo Levi, Austen, Orwell, Wodehouse, Tolstoy (the short stories, especially) and the great nature writer Barry Lopez, who is a remarkable!
WNSF: Can you tell us about any adventurous experiences in your life? Have they influenced you as a writer or your writing?
I guess I’ve had a lot of adventures – antique firearm smuggling in India 1972. Getting caught up with German terror gang in Italy in the 70s. Watching Berlin Wall come down 1989. Investigating war crimes in Bosnia 1995 Negotiating with Sudanese government on behalf of Washington DC law firm 2001 on government’s Al Qaeda database. Interviewing defecting Iraqi generals in Lebanon 2001
WNSF: A strong sense of place is vital to any great adventure story. What role does research play in your writing? How did you make your setting feel realistic?
Vital to get this right. I spend a lot of time in the field. I walked some of the migrant route in Macedonia. Spent time on the island of Lesbos, interviewing rescuers and aide workers who were dealing with rubber rafts crossing at night from Turkey. I travelled the length of the migrant route to Schengen, studying the scenery, seeing how migrants reacted to their new surroundings and how they coped – where they slept, how they acquired and cooked food, their preferred routes, the weather they had to deal with as winter came, and the friendly and hostile reactions among locals.
Above all, I wanted to know how they kept going, some of them with children. Every detail was important to me and I filled many notebooks, took many photographs, which are important for the particularities of the landscape - the trees, rocks, types of crop, look of the houses. So, yes, this is the key part of the process and I hope I got it right.
WNSF: There is an unusual relationship between the two main characters in Firefly, Naji and Paul Samson. How you made it feel genuine?
The most important relationship in Firefly is between the hunted and the hunter – the young boy Naji and Paul Samson, whose profession is tracking people. They do not meet until the end of the book but they are aware of each other and, in Samson’s case, he has to imagine what, as a boy, he would do when confronted with the enormous challenges of the Macedonian highlands in the cold.
He has to imagine himself a boy again, and of course his background is not too different from Naji’s – his family were refugees from the Lebanon – so he has, to some extent, mentally to return to his own childhood. And then, when he eventually manages to speak to Naji by phone, he has to gain his trust. The relationship continues in the series and builds to a very close bond.
WNSF: What would you consider the upsides, and the downsides, are of being an author?
Upside: independence and do not have to work in an office. Downside: if you are stuck, you have to get yourself out of the hole. There is no one who can do that for you. It can be lonely and you miss working with others. I tend to mix my life so it is not all staring at a computer screen.
WNSF: What would you say is the hardest thing about writing? And the easiest?
Undoubtedly the greatest pleasure of living with your characters for the period of writing the book and seeing how they develop independently. This is magical and a great delight. The hardest part is the sheer effort of using your imagination so intensively every day.
Firefly.
By Henry Porter.
Oct. 2018.480p. Mysterious, $27 (9780802128959).
Naji Tourna, barely in his teens, has found a way to make money that will enable his unlucky family to flee Turkey. He repairs cellphones. From a phone belonging to one of his clients, a purely evil ISIS terrorist, Naji learns of horrors the monster has committed. And the phone reveals his plans for more. This makes the boy a person of extreme interest to the terrorist cell when he sets out for a better life in Europe. As the killers pursue the "spy boy from hell" to kill him, news of his special knowledge reaches the intelligence services, and their hired people-finder, PI Luc Samson, begins a search of his own. Who will find the boy first? That's the premise that drives the intricate machinery of this novel, which alternates bravura passages and sludgy sequences that can leave readers feeling they're forging through the same chapter over and over. It all comes together in the last 50 pages, which are distinguished by fine writing, rousing action, and an especially haunting confrontation with "the results of pure evil."--Don Crinklaw
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
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Crinklaw, Don. "Firefly." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 2, 15 Sept. 2018, p. 27. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A556571655/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ce585587. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
Firefly
Henry Porter. Mysterious, $27 (480p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2895-9
In this impressive if flawed thriller from British author Porter (The Bell Ringers), Luc Samson, an ex-MI6 agent hired by his former employer, tries to locate 13-year-old Naji Touma, who has fled his native Syria for Germany to reunite with his family. Authorities suspect that the boy, recruited against his will into ISIS for his technological skills, managed to encrypt a wealth of secret ISIS data on his cellphone, including hundreds of videos showing ISIS leader Al-munajil (aka the Machete) decapitating innocent Syrians. That last fact hasn't escaped the notice of Al-munajil, who has set out with a handful of henchmen to get to Naji and his phone before Samson does. Porter excels at describing the life of trekking migrants and the atmosphere in the camps of Greece. The plot, however, sags from inaction as Naji makes his way across Southern Europe and his pursuers try to stay close. A lively ending helps, but many readers may have grown frustrated by then. Still, fans of Porter's previous books will find much to admire. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit. (Oct.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
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"Firefly." Publishers Weekly, vol. 265, no. 32, 6 Aug. 2018, p. 48. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A550547632/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=84b2b502. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
White Hot Silence. By Henry Porter. Sept. 2019. Mysterious, $26 (9780802147530); e-book (9780802147547).
Porter has written several internationally best-selling thrillers, including Brandenburg Gate (2006), winner of the CWA Steel Dagger, and his latest is a sequel to last year's ripped-from-the-headlines Firefly, which centered on the Syrian refugee crisis. Former MI6 agent Paul Samson returns to the Mediterranean, again making use of his uncanny ability to find missing persons, this time in search of Anastasia Cristakos, a Greek aid worker taken hostage by a Mafia group with terrorist ties. Anastasias billionaire husband, Denis Hisami, is unable to intervene personally, thanks to the U.S. authorities seizing his passport and throwing him in jail for his own possible acts of terrorism in the past. Coincidence? And how does Anastasias abduction and Hisami's jailing connect to the explosive information that Hisami is privy to and that his enemies are willing to kill to obtain. Hisami reluctantly turns to Samson for help, knowing that the MI6 agent has carried a torch for Anastasia for years. This frighteningly realistic political thriller will draw readers comfortable with the darker side of the genre.--Jane Murphy
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
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Murphy, Jane. "White Hot Silence." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 22, 1 Aug. 2019, pp. 32+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A598305214/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f4306d15. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
White Hot Silence
Henry Porter. Mysterious, $26 (448p) ISBN 978-0-8021-4753-0
At the start of this intricate tale of international financial skullduggery from Porter (Firefly), Anastasia Hisami, who's in Italy working with the Aysel Hisami Therapy Foundation, manages to leave a couple of cell phone messages for her husband, financier Denis Hisami, who's in Palo Alto, Calif., before she's kidnapped by two Italian gangsters. Anastasia later wakes up in a storage container on a cargo ship alongside two dead men. Before her abduction, she was also able to call her former British lover and ex-MI6 agent, Paul Samson, who now owns a restaurant in London and works as a private investigator. Denis hires Paul to find his wife, a task the investigator leaps at because he's still in love with Anastasia. Porter handles every aspect of the complicated plot, including the labyrinthine financial and political developments and the romantic triangle involving Anastasia, Denis, and Paul, with keen intelligence and compassion. Thriller readers looking for plenty of action, excellent writing, and credible, convincing characters will be rewarded. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Sept.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
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"White Hot Silence." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 26, 1 July 2019, p. 43. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A592983464/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7c4c0745. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
The Old Enemy. By Henry Porter. June 2021. 416p. Atlantic Monthly, $26 (9780802158659); e-book, $26 (9780802158666).
Since the events chronicled in White Hot Silence (2019) and Firefly (2018), former MI6 agent Paul Samson has been lying low, doing private security work. He's shadowing young environmental activist Zoe Freemantle--a thoroughly routine assignment until Samson is nearly killed by a not particularly polished assassin. Another clumsy hit attempt follows, and Samson, using his clandestine skills to track the assassins and their bosses, finds himself dealing with the fallout from the mess that led to his exit from MI6. His friend, the legendary CIA agent Robert Harland, has been killed, and Dennis Hisami, the husband of Samsons former lover Anastasia, has been poisoned by a neurotoxin while being interrogated at a congressional hearing. Both of these events suggest that Samson is the next target, but he's in the dark about why, prompting him to return to Estonia, where Harland was living, in search of answers. The trail leads to Mila Daus, once a feared Stasi interrogator in East Germany, now a billionaire who pedals data to the Russians and who has ensnared British and American government officials in honey traps. Porter makes brilliant use of material ripped from today's headlines--Russian cultivation of Western assets, nefarious data mining--to construct a riveting thriller, bolstered by a moving love story and a stunning finale in which a second congressional hearing shows that sometimes the good guys can outwit their cutthroat adversaries.--Bill Ott
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
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Ott, Bill. "The Old Enemy." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 15, 1 Apr. 2021, p. 29. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A660111195/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=efb0c805. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
The Old Enemy
Henry Porter. Atlantic Monthly, $26 (416p) ISBN 978-0-8021-5865-9
In Porter's complex conclusion to his Paul Samson trilogy (after 2019's White Hot Silence), former MI6 agent Samson's private security job watching data whiz Zoe Freemantle as she tries to penetrate the workings of the sinister social media behemoth GreenState gets unexpectedly violent, and the long strings of his past entanglements with the Greek beauty Anastasia Hisami and her husband, Kurdish guerilla fighter turned billionaire philanthropist Denis Hisami, tighten in a fast-paced series of physical attacks. Samson quickly grasps he's still the target of a revenge plot directed by shadowy Russian operative and criminal Anatoly Stepurin. As Samson tries to figure out whether he's predator or prey, he gets warnings from his old colleagues and heavy-handed interventions from CIA agents with puzzling motives. The many action sequences substitute in effect for character development, and a surfeit of expository passages detail what happened in the first two books in order to bring newcomers up to speed. This elaborate wrap-up is for series fans already invested in Samson and company. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (June)
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"The Old Enemy." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 15, 12 Apr. 2021, p. 51. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A659340648/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b59b3c58. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
The Enigma Girl
Henry Porter. Atlantic Monthly, $27 (448p) ISBN 978-0-8021-6443-8
In his ho-hum latest, Porter (the Paul Samson series) strands a winning protagonist in a saggy spy story. MI5 agent Slim Parsons is facing disgrace after her handlers accuse of her recklessness and nearly revealing her identity in a just-completed inquiry into master money launderer Ivan Guest. Knowing Guest will likely seek revenge for the disfiguring injuries he suffered during the violent end of the case on a private jet, Parsons hopes to retire, blend into civilian life, pursue her passion for archeology, and take care of her aging mother. She's shocked when her former boss asks her to go undercover again, this time to investigate how an online news operation called Middle Kingdom that has been able to reveal public corruption and the misuse of taxpayer funds. Posing as a reporter, Parsons chases down unrelated scoops, pleasing her newsroom bosses but irritating her handlers at MI5. One of her stories puts her back in the crosshairs of Guest, who launches a violent campaign to hunt her down. Parsons leaps off the page, with cool intelligence and a flinty personality, but the action drags amid a tangle of subplots. Porter has done better before. Agent; Rebecca Wearmouth, Peters, Lraser, andDunlop Literary. (Jan.)
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"The Enigma Girl." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 45, 25 Nov. 2024, pp. 36+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A818519065/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2af9e6eb. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
Porter, Henry THE ENIGMA GIRL Atlantic Monthly (Fiction None) $27.00 1, 28 ISBN: 9780802164438
Sidelined by MI5 for her violent tendencies--never mind that she was being sexually assaulted when she crowned her assailant with a champagne bottle--Agent Slim Parsons is summoned back to investigate a shadowy news site.
For months, Slim has been in hiding from her vengeance-seeking would-be rapist, billionaire money launderer Ivan Guest, whom she was secretly investigating. Her new job is to pose as a reporter at Middle Kingdom, an upstart news organization located north of London near historic Bletchley Park, that's suspected of hacking top-security government systems for its big stories. With her brother missing, possibly killed by Guest, and her mother recovering from a home invasion attack, Slim is as loathe to play by the rules of journalism as of MI5. She defies her hard-nosed but New Agey boss Abigail Exton-White in pursuing unassigned stories, including a slave labor conspiracy with possible connections to Guest (the book has no lack of subplots for her to bounce among). Surprisingly adept at handling bad guys, she arouses suspicions among the journalists. Who is she really? The novel turns on connections between Middle Kingdom and AI-equipped descendants of Bletchley Park's wartime codebreakers. There will be blood as Guest remakes Slim's acquaintance and corrupt government forces seek to shut down Middle Kingdom. As the great-granddaughter of a Jewish-born Polish intelligence officer who heroically destroyed evidence that Poland had broken the Enigma machine when Germany invaded his country, Slim has a vested interest in the drama. Journalist Porter has been compared to Mick Herron, among other top spy novelists, and Slim could have leaped from one of hisSlough House novels with her freewheeling rejection of authority. But Porter never loses sight of her humanity and basic vulnerability; the reader feels her personal losses while rooting for her to overcome them.
Journalism and spycraft make for compelling bedfellows in Porter's latest thriller.
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"Porter, Henry: THE ENIGMA GIRL." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A817945877/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0223fa3b. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
The Enigma Girl. By Henry Porter. Jan. 2025. 448p. Atlantic Monthly, $27 (9780802164438); e-book (9780802164445).
For MI5 operative Slim Parsons, things couldn't get much worse than they are right now. Her last assignment was hardly a rousing success, and she's spending most of her time watching out for the target of that assignment to come seeking retribution. Oh, and her bosses at MI5 aren't exactly thrilled with her these days. But the world must go on, and Slim's given a new assignment: penetrate, as quietly as possible, a news website that seems to have access to top-secret British government files. Porter, whose previous spy fiction includes Brandenburg Gate (2006) and Empire State (2022), has created a classic working spy: a woman whose job requires her to put her life in jeopardy, but who has an off-duty life, too. (Her mother's medical issues, for example, are a major cause of distraction.) Like John le Carre's George Smiley, Slim Parsons isn't an action hero; she's a regular person with a special set of skills. And, once readers have met her, they won't put the book down until they've finished it.
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Pitt, David. "The Enigma Girl." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 7-8, Dec. 2024, p. 111. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A829740201/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3a4fbcb1. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.