Another prominent figure has revealed how he was tapped on the shoulder by Britain’s intelligence services only days after actor Riz Ahmed disclosed that he too had been approached by the secret world.
Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, says he was approached by MI6 while studying at Oxford in 1988, invited to sign the Official Secrets Act and offered a route into Britain’s foreign intelligence service.
Speaking on the Walking the Dog podcast, Davey recalled receiving a letter “out of the blue" informing him that there were “some positions open in the Civil Service that weren’t open to competition".
After extensive background checks, he says he attended an interview where an official told him: “Before we go any further I’d have to sign the Official Secrets Act."
Only then, according to Davey, did the interviewer reveal the true purpose of the meeting.
“He said, you’ve probably guessed this is for the Secret Service," Davey recalled. The interviewer then explained “how I’d learn to be a spy. You’d learn languages, all that sort of training."
Davey ultimately declined the invitation.
“There’s a joke about ‘007 Davey’ but I don’t labour that point," he said. “I probably would be a very bad spy."
The disclosure comes only days after actor Riz Ahmed described a remarkably different encounter with Britain’s security establishment.
Ahmed says that after returning from the Berlin Film Festival, where The Road to Guantánamo had won a major award, he was stopped at Luton Airport, placed in an arm lock, aggressively questioned and accused of becoming an actor “to further the Muslim struggle". He says his phone was confiscated and that he was later asked whether he would like to “keep an eye out" for the authorities.
Both men say they were encouraged to assist the British state.
Yet the similarities largely end there.
Davey’s story sounds like the classic image of British intelligence recruitment: an Oxford undergraduate receiving a discreet invitation into the secret world.
Ahmed is also an Oxford graduate, but his account reflects a very different Britain.
His experience belongs to the era after the September 11 attacks, when counter-terrorism became one of the dominant priorities of Western intelligence agencies and Britain’s Muslim communities often found themselves under unprecedented scrutiny.
The contrast is striking.
One future public figure recalls being invited to consider a career in intelligence.
Another recalls being physically restrained before being asked to cooperate.
Neither account proves discrimination.
But together they raise uncomfortable questions about how Britain’s intelligence and security agencies identify potential recruits and whether class, race and the politics of the post-9/11 era have influenced the way such approaches are made.
They also challenge a longstanding assumption about how British intelligence recruits talent.
In 2016, the late Sir Alex Younger, then chief of MI6, sought to demolish what he called the “James Bond and Oxbridge ‘tap-on-the-shoulder’ myths" surrounding the service.
“For too long," Younger said in a 2016 speech to the British media, “people have felt that there is a single quality that defines an MI6 officer, be it an Oxbridge education or a proficiency in hand-to-hand combat."
“This is, of course, patently untrue. There is no standard MI6 officer."
Yet Davey’s account sounds remarkably close to the traditional Oxbridge recruitment culture that Younger was trying to move beyond.
Indeed, the most revealing phrase in Davey’s account may be the simplest.
“They sent me this letter out of the blue."
That is not how most people imagine applying for a job.
Nor are Ahmed and Davey alone.
Veteran broadcaster Jon Snow has spoken publicly about being approached by the intelligence services. So has Nigella Lawson, one of Britain’s best-known television personalities and daughter of former British Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
Together they suggest that Britain’s intelligence services have long taken an interest in talented people operating well beyond the worlds of diplomacy and the military.
Yet another curious pattern emerges.
The approaches are described.
The institutions are identified.
The recruiters themselves remain anonymous.
Davey recounts a lengthy conversation with the interviewer who offered him a career in espionage. Ahmed recalls the officials involved in his airport encounter. Yet neither has publicly identified the individual concerned.
That may simply reflect fading memories.
Or it may reflect the enduring culture of discretion that continues to surround Britain’s intelligence services even after recruitment stories become public.
History offers reasons for that caution.
The public eventually learned the identity of Cambridge-educated Kim Philby, one of the most notorious Soviet moles ever to penetrate British intelligence. Former MI6 officer Mark Allen, an Oxford graduate, became a public figure because of controversy surrounding the UK’s secret dealings with Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya and allegations connected to post-9/11 rendition operations.
Perhaps that is why the stories told by Ahmed and Davey are so revealing.
They offer a rare glimpse of how Britain’s intelligence services seek talent.
But they also suggest that the experience of being approached may differ dramatically depending on who is being approached, when the approach takes place and what fears happen to dominate the political climate of the day.
What remains hidden are the people making those approaches.
And that may be the most intriguing mystery of all.
