‘They were afraid. Brave men are always afraid. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the willingness to face fear. They faced their fears.’
The words are familiar. Euripides rehearsed them, Seneca upheld them, Mark Twain perpetuated them. But never have they seemed as relevant as when former SOE [Special Operations Executive] agent Noreen Riols spoke them of her former fellow agents in an auditorium of stunned Guildford Book Festival goers last Sunday afternoon. That’s the thing about spies, they’re practical, resourceful people, not idle dreamers. Compare Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, or the much bandied ‘keep calm and carry on’ of 1939 ad infinitum, and the grounded, self-motivating quality of Riols’ words could hardly be more patent.
Today Riols is well known as a writer (she has had ten books published worldwide) and for her frequent contributions to Woman’s Hour, the BBC World Service, and the press at large.
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