ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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Top Gun
Keira Knightley is superb as the GCHQ whistleblower who breached the Official Secrets Act in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, says MARIA DUARTE
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Official Secrets (15)
Directed by Gavin Hood
BASED on the true story of British whistleblower Katharine Gun, who put her career and family on the line in an attempt to stop the Iraq war in 2003, this sharp political thriller still resonates loudly.
Gun, played superbly by Keira Knightley, was a Mandarin translator at GCHQ who leaked an email to The Observer in which the US spook agency the NSA asked Britain to gather intelligence — or dirt — on certain members of the UN security council to persuade them to vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq.
Sadly, Gun failed and to avoid a witch-hunt of her colleagues she confessed to her actions. She was charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act but wasn’t taken to court until a year later. In the meantime, her Turkish husband was threatened with deportation.
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