Helen Dunmore on 'Exposure', James Bond, and her new take on the spying game

Espionage isn't just about James Bond glamour, it's about loss, pain and neglected families, claims Helen Dunmore. Guy Pewsey talks to the prolific author about her new novel

Bridge of spies: Helen Dunmore explores the perils of espionage in her subtle 'Exposure' (Charlie Forgham Bailey)

Spies, for all their secrets, are remarkably present in this country's culture. James Bond, London Spy, Spooks, even Johnny English; the daring adventures of Her Majesty's finest are an ever-present fixture in the films, novels and TV programmes churned out by our best writers across all platforms. But behind the gadgets, the martinis and the Aston Martins, there are real lives being lost, wrenching sacrifices being made, and once-undeniable loyalties being tested. When James Bond fells another foe in some exotic clime, is there a wife and child losing sleep over the possibility that, this time, he might not come home?

In Exposure, the novelist and poet Helen Dunmore brings those dark doubts to the fore, and sheds light on the struggles of a family left behind when the head of the household takes a dangerous risk. When Simon Callington, a trusted yet professionally stunted employee of the British government serving in the midst of the Cold War, takes a phone call from colleague and old friend Giles begging for help, he does not think twice before leaping into action. But when this small favour snowballs into an incident of national security, his wife Lily must fight to prevent her family's doom. For Dunmore, author of nigh on 50 books, this abandoned wife presented an abyss of questions.

“I'm really interested in presenting history from the bottom,” she explains, sitting in an office at Penguin Random House's Pimlico HQ, appropriately a short walk from Vauxhall's oddly distinctive MI6 building.

“History seen through the eyes of those who don't have the power,” she adds. “In terms of the books, their words are not the ones passed down to us. It's not the glamorous life of the spy, and what did he do, but what happens to the family when he is taken away, when he is in prison? Lily is left behind and has to do everything. So how does she do that? That to me was central to the drama: people discovering resources in themselves, how to outwit the fate that someone else wants to dump on you.”

Lily, steeled by a mysterious youth punctuated by loss and pain, must stand by as her husband is branded a traitor, finding her own strengths to ensure the survival of herself and her three children. But Simon has his own history to tackle: he may not be the double agent some claim, but he possesses a secret that makes him an emotional double agent, a soul divided between a forbidden love affair from his past and the devoted husband of the present.

For this blend of espionage and domesticity, Dunmore, who grew up in during the 1960s as a child unaware that the Iron Curtain was just a metaphor, drew from her memories of fear and uncertainty at the time. But getting to grips with the motives behind such career choices took hard thought. “I did a lot of thinking about the psychology of espionage,” she says. “ That, to me, is what is fascinating. What do people feel about themselves while they are living a double life, and how does it affect their relationships? How does it affect their sense of themselves? Does it corrode after decades? Does it injure the person? There were slapstick elements of the Cold War that I remember – the escape of George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs, for example – lots of things that seemed so far-fetched that you could hardly believe in them. Nevertheless it was flesh and blood. The people who were betrayed, people who were bundled into the back of cars, people who experienced horrendous fates, who were killed: the unglamorous, messy, mucky consequences.”

In a career spanning decades, Dunmore has tackled children's books, poetry, short stories and a formidable range of novels covering ghostly romances, Russian sieges and familial abandonment. But Exposure, while exploring themes some might detect in her work, is her first foray into espionage. “I certainly read spy stories growing up,” she smiles. “The classic ones like The Riddle in the Sands, but also I love John le Carré's work.” I ask if her decision to consider the role of the dutiful wife – domesticated, yes, but willing to do what must be done – is a conscious attempt to chip away at the patriarchal stamp on the genre?

“To me, it is slightly tipping the scales in looking at the entire life. I think I'm a little bit influenced by Graham Greene in that way: he looked inward at the moral and psychological conflict that you get. The turmoil and the tumult within the self. And also in how flawed everyone is. How they're struggling to be a little bit less flawed.” Not with 007, of course, Ian Fleming's apparently immortal spy idol.

“Of course, in Bond it's very different,” she says. “He is dazzlingly handsome and attractive, everyone he meets is irresistible and beautiful. But we're in a different world of different archetypes, which is immensely enjoyable. It's a different thing: it's glamorised and wonderful, with shootouts and, in the films especially, an almost Rococo feel. I personally feel more drawn towards Greene or Le Carré, just because of the idea of this danger slowly coming out of the corner of your eye: It won't say 'I am the enemy', it just slowly reveals itself.”

This secret predator, the palpable, invisible threat, pulses through Exposure, but Lily presses onward. It is unsurprising that Dunmore, chatty and engaging, found the charismatic – if vice-ridden – Giles the easiest figure to mould, but she relied on her instincts when it came to forming her heroine. “Lily is quite a reserved person. What I did really get with Lily is that ferocious desire to protect the children, which I think anyone who's had children totally understands. When it comes down to the wire, you will do all kinds of things that you don't imagine you'd do. But to really get under those layers, to reveal herself to herself, was very complex. Lily's role in the book is a very complicated one. She is not only protecting her family, but she also is the most decisive actor: she buries that file, and it stays buried. She has been conditioned by a childhood of losing her father, her home, her language, everything. She's not going to take that again. She will do anything.”

That file, Exposure's tell-tale heart, incriminates Giles and, by association, Simon. Its content is never divulged, a MacGuffin that merely draws attention to the bigger mystery that lies between the two men as, I suggest, a symbol of the Cold War itself. “It controlled life, it dominated politics and the news and the public discourse. It was very pervasive. It seeped through everything. What I try to show is that it wasn't a war out there. This thing that pervaded people's lives and thoughts and behaviour: it was a war within.”

Dunmore, recently turned 63, has spent much of her life quietly reimagining history. Born in Yorkshire before studying English at York University, she went on to marry, embrace a step-son and have two children of her own. But she has shied away slightly from the appeal of the London literati, instead building a home in Bristol. Exposure also explores the isolated coasts of England, with Lily retreating to the safety of a wilderness, so it is no surprise that Dunmore has her own love of escape, regularly visiting Cornwall and the house she owns in West Penwith.

There are more sparkling, flashbulb-lit authors, but as she has spent years studying sieges and army uniforms, she has undoubtedly made her own history. 1996 saw the inaugural Orange Prize reward the best of that year's bunch in women's fiction. It was given to A Spell of Winter, Dunmore's gothic tale of forbidden, familial passion. The award has since been rechristened as the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and she applauds its resilience. “I think it's still very relevant because it has shown how a top level prize like that can be sustained, and can grow, and can keep bringing more and more excellent books to the fore. And to me it has made a lot of difference over those years.”

Miles from the shadow of MI6, Dunmore launched the novel with a party at Dulwich Books in South-east London. The independent shop, and those of its kind, provide her with a very different kind of secure location, a sanctuary from the online. “I would love to live in a landscape that has lots and lots of bookshops,” she suggests, before pausing. “Which is selfish I suppose! I think that it's very important for people to browse and wander. It seems to be that a bookshop is a public statement by our society, that books are important. That they're out there. Physical books are important to me: I like to have it, to open it, turn the pages, take it out in the sunshine. I'm not by nature a collector, but I do have a lot of books. What's the point, in the end, of us having everything else if we haven't got delight?”

Helen Dunmore's 'Exposure' (Hutchinson, hardback £16.99) is available from 28 January