![]() ![]() The two become lovers, and the summer of Serena’s final year is an idyll of re-education, exquisite food and mushroom-hunting at Canning’s cottage outside Cambridge. A new- minted devotion to Solzhenitsyn, Koestler, Orwell et al spills over into hyperbole, but attracts the attention of Tony Canning, a married middle-aged don, bon vivant – and former MI5 operative. Serena’s contributions evolve from banter to belligerence as she hones her anti-communist rhetoric. What distinguishes her – and catalyses her later downfall – is a voracious reading habit, culminating briefly in a column in the student paper. Hardly an auspicious beginning for a budding secret agent. On the threshold of this disarray, Serena – daughter of a mild-mannered Anglican vicar – discloses that she graduated from Cambridge with an embarrassing third in mathematics. ![]()
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