With all the endless coverage of evil Russians poisoning residents of beautiful towns in England's rural heartland, cyber-warfare, and a mad dictator behind it all (Putin is only missing a white cat and a swivel chair, let's face it), anyone would think we were back in the middle of the Cold War of the 1960s!
Which gives me the perfect excuse to present to you a little feature-ette/mixtape on the appropriate theme of "Spy Music" - all moody jazz percussion and twangly cimbaloms, muted bass guitars and violins - such as this tribute to the style:
Michael Caine's very presence in this type of film encouraged appropriately mysterious music:
In any such collection, there simply must be a Bond theme - so here's not one, but two...
...and, of course, here's probably my favourite choon of this whole genre [and, yes - John Barry was its master]:
I am imagining myself breaking into luxurious apartments, sneaking around cavernous underground headquarters of sinister organisations, whooshing down a convenient zip-wire or skiing down a mountain ahead of a helicopter and machine-gun fire as we speak, sweeties!
Nah, I'm not. I'd rather be at home with a glass of cider and some Vaughan Williams playing on Radio 3, actually.
