The Lifeline

Mark Chalmers, is 36, dark haired, athletic, keen on skiing and winter sports, speaks fluent French and German and has a taste for wine, food and women.

It is 1938 and Chalmers, a master at Eton, is recruited by an old friend at the Foreign Office and introduced to his boss 'B'. Reluctantly he agrees to take on a covert mission for British Intelligence – to parachute into Nazi-occupied Austria and pass on vital information to a British agent.

Chalmers has no intention of committing himself beyond this one job but once he reaches his destination, he finds himself sucked into the cause – fighting fascism with the Underground.

First published in 1946, seven years before Bond's debut in Casino Royale, Bottome's hero shares many similarities with Ian Fleming's Bond in fact, It seems that Bond may not have existed without Bottome. It was at the school she ran in Austria with her ex-spy husband, Ernan Forbes Dennis, that she taught Ian Flemming, to write. 'A gifted and entertaining novelist' TLS.