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CHARLES CUMMING
A Foreign Country
Copyright
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
First Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Charles Cumming 2012
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photographs © Josephine Pugh/Arcangel Images (cityscape); Henry Steadman (foreground and figure, right); SuperStock (bench, seated man); Shutterstock.com (all other images)
A Colder War extract © Charles Cumming 2013
Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Extract from The Spirit Level copyright © Seamus Heaney
Published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber 2001
Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber
Extract from The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley © 1953 Hamish Hamilton reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd
Extract from Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham © 1928 William Heinemann reproduced by kind permission of A P Watt on behalf of the Royal Literary Fund
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ebook Edition © March 2012 ISBN: 9780007346448
Version: 2016-05-03
Dedication
For Carolyn Hanbury
Epigraph
‘There’s just one thing I think you ought to know before you take on this job … If you do well you’ll get no thanks and if you get into trouble you’ll get no help. Does that suit you?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Then I’ll wish you good afternoon.’
W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden
‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’
L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
Contents