Alec Guinness

Writing about films is not something I often do, but as an old Cold Warrior who has covered intelligence matters for decades and been involved in a few, the thrilling book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is right up my dark alley.

The beauty of John le Carré's continuing canon is that his scrutiny of spies' lives is always a metaphor for humanity's broader existential predicaments.

The term "class act" seems overused at a time when there are fewer examples of it around, but no more apt expression comes to mind. If anybody had the right to be, it was Sir Alec Guinness.

Christian Bale strikes me as a complete enigma. Yes, his acting chops are prodigious, but he seems to me to be all technique and no heart; we get buckets of perfectly formed ice, but very little fire.

We are so collectively mired in the hyper-superficial, materialistic, flashy "moment of now" that we haven't paused to acknowledge a man who helped bring some of the finest British films ever made to the screen.

Great heist movies work by tying us to the unfortunate characters who populate them, and investing us in the outcome of their attempts to reach the same pot of gold so many of us chase.

These special movies not only recreate the horror of combat, but also portray the human toll war takes beyond those who fall on the field of battle.

Peter Sellers, best known to the world as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in the "Pink Panther" series, would have turned 84 this month. Wouldn't life be brighter if this comic genius hadn't left us so soon?