Light and Shadow: Memoir’s of a Spy’s Son (2016) is the
autobiography of well-known Australian journalist Mark Colvin.
This is both a coming-of-age book and
the author’s ‘attempt to reconstruct’ his father’s secret life as an active
intelligence officer in Britain’s MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service.
Colvin commences with his trip to Iran
to cover the hostage crisis in 1980 and the journey into the self-declared
Republic of Iranian Kurdistan, which he describes as ‘an extraordinary and
perhaps pivotal moment’ not only in world affairs, but in his own life, when,
the most scared he had been, Colvin phoned his father.
It is after this first trip to Iran as
a foreign correspondent that Colvin (1952-2017) reverts to writing about his
roots: his parents, and particularly his British father.
There are tales of his father in the
1950s – the James Bond years – in which Ian Fleming’s espionage novels were published.
His father was involved in countless events, including the Suez affair, the
Buster Crabb affair, the Kim Philby incident (his father’s predecessor), and
the Konfrontasi in Borneo. Colvin documents the long absences as his father
travelled, the postings overseas to Austria, Malaysia, and Australia, and his
parents’ divorce in 1964.
The post-divorce stability his sister Zoe
and he had was over when his father re-married. A year later his mother re-married
and they left England for Canberra, Australia. It was in Canberra where Colvin got
his first job as a junior darkroom worker [photograph printer] at the
Australian National University.
Colvin describes his own influences
that led to a life in journalism: music, movies, literature, and newspapers.
Colvin was 25 when his father John revealed
his true profession as a spy. Researching his father’s life for this memoir revealed
some surprises as he tries to make sense ‘of a life that was lived on two
levels, the public and the secret.’ Deciphering his father’s conversations to
determine what was fact and what was fiction, Colvin has to conduct some ‘detective
work’ by unearthing documents, newspaper clippings, and photographs, as well as
anything that his work colleagues and mother Anne remembered in order to write
about a father he barely knew.
In the second half of the book, Colvin
recounts his journalism career from 1974 with the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation (ABC), within Australia and England, and as a foreign
correspondent, reporting on major events, such as the hunger strikes in Belfast,
Ireland, and the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda. It was in Rwanda in 1994 where
he contracted a rare inflammation of the blood vessels that affected his health
for the next 23 years. He mentions this only in passing as a postscript.
The lives of Colvin and his father are
fascinating, not only for their historical significance, but in remembrance of
his co-workers, past and present, and their work in the media to bring truth to
the news. The narrative, sometimes a little slow, is best when he describes the
images indelibly etched in his mind, like a personal snapshot in time, from
haunting tragedies to personal exhilaration.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom
(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest
Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The
Sudan Curse (2009).
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