Apart from running Faire Sans Dire for over forty years, Bill has also worked as a bean counter in both practice and industry. During his career he has been a director and executive of several renowned international businesses (in the Barclays Bank Group, the Reuters Group and Citigroup). He’s trod on the tails of many fat cats and investigated and despatched some household name villains over the decades. Baroness Meta Ramsay reminisces on her time at the University of Glasgow and her friends from those days who went on to lead New Labour. As a consequence, Edward unwittingly ends up working as an MI6 asset. Early in 1974 he is nearly killed not once, but four times. Indirectly it is all MI6’s fault ... so far as his parents are concerned. Sara decides someone high up in MI6 has to pay and persuades Roger to exact revenge. Meanwhile Edward is sent to supposed safety from London town to Nassau to continue his career as an accountant. Edward had not the benefit of hindsight as to what was about to ensue but he was no longer manacled by manipulation or so he thought to prevent him from dealing with it."

Ramsay welcomed me to her flat to talk about what it was like being part of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and her involvement in the New Labour, as well as to reminisce on her time as a student at Glasgow with some of the figures who would go on to become big names through those years. From her endearing and gentle nature, urging me to take a biscuit from the selection she’d laid out on platters, it would be hard to guess this woman was once believed to be in the running for chief of MI6. Although her meticulousness in making sure my cup of tea was made to my liking might be indicative of the type of character that led to such a successful career. who was a law enforcement officer in Bermuda. Inter alia, John interfered with Bill’s unscheduled flight to London via Hamilton Bermuda on 21 December 1974, allegedly as a practical joke. What happened is accurately detailed (subject to Though Ramsay’s early politics may have been influenced by Glasgow Uni, a member of the debating society where her contemporaries were the likes of John Smith and Donald Dewar, she insists this was not the case for her career in intelligence. Some journalists have suggested circles Ramsay was involved in during her time at university, particularly in her role as President of the Scottish National Union of Students, were CIA and MI6 fronts used to recruit for the intelligence services – a claim Ramsay dismisses as rubbish. “It had absolutely nothing to do with Glasgow University. Sometimes people ask because they’ve read all these things about Oxford and Cambridge tutorials, the classic idea from all these novels and things. That your tutor tapped you on the shoulder. At Glasgow University we didn’t have tutorials and glasses of sherry and people tapping you on the shoulder.” I noted with curiosity that judging from her book shelves, she does seem to enjoy a spy novel herself. On the real way she was recruited, the former MI6 Case Officer simply explains she was abroad at the time, and the Ministry of Defence spoke to her. Leo tried to becalm himself but his gut kept churning even though his life wasn't on the line. Only his career was but Burlington's life would be. In real life Bill Fairclough was an intelligence agent or spook and was the author of Beyond Enkription, the first of six fact based autobiographical spy novels forming The Burlington Files series.He was born in England in 1 In real life Bill Fairclough was an intelligence agent or spook and was the author of Beyond Enkription, the first of six fact based autobiographical spy novels forming The Burlington Files series. Beyond Enkription is an intriguing unadulterated factual thriller and a great read as long as you don’t expect John le Carré’s delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots – after all, Bill Fairclough didn't go to Eton (or Sherborne) and was not an author by profession. The British Isles have not been united since 1922. There is the small matter of Irish independence and the subsequent progression of the Irish Free State to the Irish Republic, outside the British Commonwealth and NATO, but now an enthusiastic member of the European Union recently abandoned by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I'm sorry: that last sentence could have been written by Bill Fairclough! I too am a failed writer.

With the 20 year anniversary of the Iraq war falling in March this year, debates of whether or not Britain should have joined Bush in Iraq have naturally spiked again. “Recently, I can’t tell you how frustrated and angry I’ve been at the television coverage of the anniversary. People who don’t know what they’re talking about, they really don’t. They think it all started then. No, it came from a very bad set of circumstances in 1991. And of course, it’s now just become conventional wisdom, the Iraq war and how terrible it was. I don’t think most of the people who say it really understand what they’re talking about. It’s just something that gets parrotted.” He was born in England in 1950. In the early seventies Bill qualified as a Chartered Accountant and unwittingly started working for MI5 and MI6. In 1978 he, along with Colonel Alan Pemberton CVO MBE and Barrie Parkes BEM from British Intelligence, co-founded a niche global intelligence agency known as “Faire Sans Dire”. Since then that organisation has operated under many guises, as has the author.

Fairclough, Bill. Beyond Enkription: The Burlington Files (p. 264). The Burlington Files Limited. Kindle Edition. "