Tag: Kim Philby

Damian Lewis’ Song of the Week: Never Judge A Man By His Umbrella

Trust is hard to come by. Honesty is in short supply. Trump is back on Twitter… This song is about secrets, lies, and spies…

-Damian Lewis at The Tabernacle London, London Jazz Festival, November 2022

Damian Lewis performing “Never Judge A Man By His Umbrella” at The Old Market in Brighton, September 2023

The feedback has been fantastic since we launched Damian Lewis’s Song of the Week series back in July. It seems that the fandom has really been enjoying the deep dives into the personal stories behind Damian’s songs. So, a BIG thank you for reading! If you missed the previous posts, you can find all of them here.

Today, we spotlight “Never Judge A Man By His Umbrella,” a spy-themed song that Damian wrote for his debut album, Mission Creep.

ENJOY! Continue reading “Damian Lewis’ Song of the Week: Never Judge A Man By His Umbrella”

Damian Lewis and My Homeland

If you have been following this blog for some time,  you certainly know about my obsession with Homeland and Brody in particular. And so you probably think this post is yet another one about my all-time favorite fictional character…

Well, you’re wrong! 🙂

This post is about Damian Lewis and My Homeland – the country that I was born and raised in: Turkey. I have been inspired to write this post in London in August 2022 when Damian signed the set list I lifted at his first live music gig in Turkish:

“Tesekkur, Bahar.” (“Thanks, Bahar.”)

Continue reading “Damian Lewis and My Homeland”

A Spy Among Friends on MGM+, Episode 6: No Man’s Land

The East German authorities built the Berlin Wall to stop people from escaping to West Germany.  Most of the 155 km wall was made up of 3.6m high concrete panels while the rest was barbed wire. A heavily guarded no man’s land (the title of the episode!) known as the “death strip” ran along the Eastern side of the Wall. More than 7,000 East German soldiers manned the watchtowers and the bunkers. It was the best-lit area in Berlin thanks to the lamp posts every 30 meters. In addition, there were alarms, ditches, barbed wire, guard dogs and weapons that automatically fired shots at the escapers.

A Spy Among Friends finale opens at one of the seven crossing points between East Berlin and West Berlin. As I try to understand who is in the car approaching the checkpoint to get into East Berlin…

Continue reading “A Spy Among Friends on MGM+, Episode 6: No Man’s Land”

A Spy Among Friends on MGM+, Episode 5: Snow

A Spy Among Friends is the kind of show where one should pay attention to every detail. For me, this extends to episode  titles. Snow.  It is a polysemous word. The first thing that comes to mind when snow is concerned is, of course, the small white pieces of ice that sometimes fall from the sky when it is cold. However,  as a verb, snow also means to deceive or trick someone with persuasive talk. And it is exactly what spies do, isn’t it?  So it snows in Moscow in this episode while the spies keep snowing each other 🙂

Continue reading “A Spy Among Friends on MGM+, Episode 5: Snow”

A Spy Among Friends on MGMPlus, Episode 4: Vodka

The Russian National drink names this episode and is a recurring theme in the story.

Na Zdorovie!

Important morning in Moscow for Philby. He has an appointment at Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters, for his debrief. The CIA agents are watching him dress up from the CIA safe house across from his apartment. As he prepares to leave, Philby remembers the press conference he had 10 years ago to deny the accusation that he was responsible for helping Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess escape to the USSR. Continue reading “A Spy Among Friends on MGMPlus, Episode 4: Vodka”