Knowhow Book of Spycraft Updated to Reflect Realities of Modern Espionage

LONDON: Publishers Usborne are to reissue their bestselling Knowhow Book of Spycraft, updating the 70s children’s spy-primer to reflect the new rules of engagement of the War on Terror.

The original, considered a classic in its day, was a lovingly illustrated how-to-guide to the tricks of the espionage trade, but - spies say - is showing its age.

“It’s frozen in a Cold War mindset,” explained MI5’s John de Lacy, a consultant on the new edition. “Take disguise, for instance: turning over a scarf with a different colour on either side may have left Warsaw Pact agents wondering where you’d got to, but is probably not going to fool a hardened Al-Qaeda operative. Nor is the radical Islamist bent on martyrdom going to be deterred by a matchboxful of beans tipped over their head as they open a door, painfully embarrassing as this would be for any normal spy.”

Instead, the new edition focuses on the profiling and the rendition of suspected enemy agents, and psychological warfare.

The new guide is not without its critics, however.

“I couldn’t find a single cartoon strip on costumes,” said Spy Z who advised the writers of the old volume on the art of concealment. “How are spies going to win the War on Terror if they don’t even know how to make themselves look fatter with a small cushion?

“We now have page after page of naked men being attacked by dogs, or else with ladies’ nickers on their heads,” Spy Z sputtered, reddening slightly under his cocoa powder, “What does this have to do with spying?”

His archrival, the mysterious Black Hat Spy was not impressed either: “Certainly there is a section on telecommunication, but it says nothing about grinning hard and holding your nose while speaking on the phone, only how to bumb a captured agent with the receiver.

“My Morse blink signals are sadly neglected too. It took me 15 years to develop that method. And now it’s been replaced with a list of mock execution dos and don’ts and a fold out chart of where to make incisions on an enemy spy’s willie. That’s not nice. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even Spy Z.

“And if 21st century spies aren’t taught how to encrypt messages by splitting words in the wrong places,” the master agent snorted through his false moustache, “why, they might as well be writing plaintext!”

But Usborne are unrepentant.

“These are the realities of modern espionage,” said de Lacy, “Black Hat, Yellow Dress Girl, Spy Z and The One Arm Spy were great agents once, but they’re living in the past. Besides, there was felt to be an overwhelming need for this update, particularly after the publication last year of the revised Knowhow Book of Jokes & Tricks, now The Usborne Book of Unending Jihad.”