HOWZAT

He went for an initial interview, primarily to please his mother, but pressed ahead with the application out of curiosity. Once he moved beyond the first stage, he was asked to sign the Official Secrets Act. “I was simultaneously flattered, exhilarated and oddly apprehensive,” he said at the time.

Six months later, Cumming came to the conclusion that the spy life was not for him. “As the application process progressed, I realised it was not as exciting as it is made out to be. It would be very tough, very demanding and stressful. It would have been very hard on marriage and family life. I wasn’t suited for it and I think SIS came to the same conclusion.”

But the experience was not wasted. Cumming moved to Montreal to write A Spy by Nature in which his central character, Alec Milius, is approached by MI6 in a very similar way. In his review of the book, Andrew Roberts, the historian, commented on the accuracy of Cumming’s detailed description. “Anyone wishing to join the SIS should buy this book before undergoing the recruitment process,” he wrote.

Cumming has no idea why he was talent- spotted for undercover work. “I really don’t know,” he says. “I think I am quite personable and good with people. Maybe it was my background — I’m an Old Etonian and I fit a stereotype there. They like people with good degrees and I got a first. Other than that, I have no idea.”

He has, however, no regrets about choosing writing over spying. “It is what I always wanted to do,” he says. Spy novels weren’t what he envisaged when he started out but he fell into the genre and discovered he loved it. “My background was English literature and I came to traditional spy writers like John Le Carre late.”

Now that he has found his niche, he’s working a rich seam. His next book, due out in 2011, is about the Cambridge spies. “It’s definitely my genre,” he says. “You can explore all sorts of interesting ideas about politics, morality, paranoia through a good spy story.”

Cumming is based in west London where he lives with his wife, Melissa, and their children, Stanley, four, and Iris, two. He doesn’t have any family left in Ayr — his parents, who are divorced, both moved to England several years ago. “I was sent to boarding school at Eton as a boy,” he says. “I have nobody left in Scotland now, although I do get back occasionally for book-related events. Not as much as I’d like to, though.”

Recently he learnt that Spy by Nature and its sequel, The Spanish Game, have been optioned by Redrum Films in Los Angeles. John Hodge, the Glasgow-born screenwriter who wrote Trainspotting, has signed on to write the script. Cumming says he’s happy to hand over the film project to someone else, although he would like to turn his hand to screenwriting in the future. “Hemingway once said that when it comes to having Hollywood films made of your books, you should stop up at the Californian state line and wait for them to throw the money at you,” he says. “That sounds like good advice to me.”

Typhoon by Charles Cumming is published by Penguin at £7.99

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