Quote of the day: Was the deep state born in the spy novels of the early 20th century?
I suspect so.
I suspect so. I just noticed this in John Buchan’s World War I-era novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps:
Away behind all the governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further, and then he got caught. … He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me.
For what it’s worth, the Hitchcock movie is unfaithful to the book and I think much better for it.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
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