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an interest in the orient, and, in some cases, even family kinship. And,
once undercover, they did what they did—‘their bit,’ they would have said
in those days—as effectively as they could, without drawing undue atten-
tion to themselves. For that was and still is the way of the intelligence
professional: to assume one’s covert role, and to invest in one’s covert
space. What mattered was being in the right place at the right time and
getting the job done.
It is ironic perhaps that all the members of the Baghdad Set, not least
Freya Stark, would doubtless have been quick to acknowledge that one of
the abiding challenges for the covert operative is solitude. Not physical
loneliness or social loneliness necessarily, but inner, operational loneli-
ness—knowing secrets that can never be shared, performing tasks that can
never be acknowledged, playing roles that can never be applauded. There
is a profound, desert-like stillness at the centre of any covert space that
inevitably intensifies the operative’s sense of alienation, not from others
necessarily, but an inner distancing from whatever s/he is required to
know, to do, and to be in the secret world. Thus undercover work of all
kinds, but especially active espionage, is partly a matter of cool and calcu-
lated simulation and deception according to the training manual, yet
partly also an act of faith in one’s own ability to cope with operational
loneliness and to complete one’s missions unaided, unknown, and unob-
served. No social set can entirely supplant such isolation. Negotiating and
surviving the ultimate solitude at the core of all secret work is essential to
its successful completion. But it must have seemed obvious to Freya Stark
and her Baghdad friends that social activity can provide intermittent,
superficial relief from clandestinity, rather like the welcome appearance of
the occasional oasis or pumping station on the desert horizon. And so
evenings in wartime Baghdad were lively and convivial.
What defined the social conduct of the Baghdad Set was something
infinitely more modern than the Victorian and Edwardian sense of superi-
ority and entitlement that had once characterized the attitude of so many
privileged British expatriates—whether in colonies under direct rule or in
more nuanced areas of influence, such as the Middle East and Central
Asia. Now, under the threat of fascism, sensed more immediately in Iraq
than perhaps anywhere else in the region, there existed among the diplo-
matic and intelligence community a commonly perceived need to preserve
a collective sense of social identity and of civil British behaviour in an alien
cultural context. Just as the officers of KINGCOL were required, even
while living in desert camps, to change into grey flannels and tweed jackets