Estoril, Cascais and the Mouth of Hell
The villages of Estoril and Cascais flourished during the 1940s, where exiled aristocracy rubbed shoulders with diplomats, refugees, and (of course!) spies at the villas, beachfront restaurants and the Casino Estoril, which was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale. The promenade between Estoril and Cascais provides tourists with a scenic (and easy) walk along the beachfront, with plenty of places to stop for refreshments.
Continuing further along the coast from Cascais, past striking beaches and cliffs, you’ll find the Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). Once a sea cave, it collapsed leaving a cavern and sea arch. The Atlantic’s waves give this opening a beating, and during nasty storms the water is known to explode upwards, giving the site its (rather melodramatic) name.
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I’ve tried to do justice to Lisbon in City of Spies, but whilst sipping a glass of Douro red in the Rossio, one thing kept coming back to me: I may have finished writing my novel, but I don’t think the real city of spies is done with me yet . . .
Q&A with Mara Timon
1. What inspired you to write City of Spies?
About a decade ago, I saw a documentary about Special Operations Executives and became intrigued by the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’. Instructed by Churchill to ‘set Europe ablaze’, they seemed to revel in breaking rules, not the least of which included recruiting women to work behind enemy lines. I began to binge-read the biographies and autobiographies of their agents, and at that point something clicked; a need to write stories about (fictional) female SOE agents.
The first story I wrote was about a young woman, newly drafted into the SOE, and her work in Occupied France in 1943. In the story that character met another SOE trainee called Cécile (who we now know as Elisabeth). Before long, I began to feel Cécile standing behind me, poking my shoulder and saying, ‘Hurry up – you’ll write my story next.’
If you’ve finished City of Spies, you know that she does tend to get what she wants. I’ll get back to that first story once Cécile/Elisabeth finishes with me.
2. How much research did you do before you started writing?
The Portuguese friend who suggested I write about Lisbon had given me a high-level picture of the history, but I wanted to get a better feel for it before deciding to base a story there. A good deal of the information was online, and the National Archive files were brilliant. It gave me an idea of which way the story might go, but then I made my own life difficult: I don’t plot out my books before writing them. I know where they start and have a rough idea of where they may end up, but the characters themselves direct what happens in between. Which meant that some of my research, while giving me a good perspective, wasn’t used, and more research was required as the story developed.
3. Did you make any surprising discoveries during your research?
Well, for starters, I had no idea how much was really going on in Lisbon during the war. Smuggling and espionage, yes. But there were also youth marches that weren’t too different from the ones in Germany, and while many members of Salazar’s government and his police force were pro-Axis, a number of them used their diplomatic powers to help European refugees, e.g. by providing them with visas and safe houses.
I was more amused than surprised when I discovered that there really was a ‘secret’ tunnel between Rossio Station and the Hotel Avenida next door. There was no doubt in my mind that it was well used, allowing people to sneak into the city for a dodgy meeting and then get out before anyone knew they had even been in Lisbon. I’d actually hoped to be able to walk through it on my last trip to Lisbon but discovered that – sadly – it had been blocked off in the ’70s.
Also, as I read about the real spies that operated in Lisbon during the war, I kept coming across the name Dusko Popov, codename Tricycle, and found that intriguing. Why that name? Officially it was because he was running a trio of double agents, although some claim that it was because he always had a beautiful woman on either side of him. Popov, and his promiscuous lifestyle, became the primary inspiration for Fleming’s 007.
4. City of Spies includes some fictionalised versions of real-life people, such as Maurice Buckmaster and Vera Atkins. Why did you choose to include them and not create completely fictionalised characters?
Why create fictionalised characters when the real-life people not only existed, but were so well documented – and interesting? If I can’t find out who did something in real life, I’ll make them up, but using real people makes me feel closer to the history. What I write is fiction, but I do try not to misrepresent them!
5. What drew you to Elisabeth as a character? Why did you decide to tell her story in particular?
I created Elisabeth in a previous story, and as bonkers as it sounds, she wouldn’t leave me alone. I love Elisabeth. She’s strong, determined, and fights for what she believes in, and in trying to do the right thing, often finds herself in trouble. She also – to quote Eduard Graf – ‘drinks too much, smokes too much, and keeps very bad company.’ She’s a lot of fun to write about because I genuinely have no idea what she’s going to do next.
As to why I decided to tell her story? Well, that was her doing. I’d created Elisabeth in an earlier book and noticed that she kept cropping up. By halfway through that story, I could feel her tapping my shoulder, telling me to hurry up.
