How much of this is true and how much frothy imagination one can only speculate. MI5 had to approve the text. Spies and Stars is mostly based on real events, Charlotte says, but it was an actor friend, not Harry (her real-life husband, Terence Brady) who took up the Soviet cause: "It was awfully brave because you had to convince your own family you were a Communist, you had to be real," she says. "It was a horrible thing to have to do."
If Charlotte's life sometimes reads like a sitcom, that's no surprise. After an early success with A Coronet Among the Weeds, an account of her year as a Deb, she went on to write in partnership with Brady, creating some of the most popular TV comedies of the 1970s – including No, Honestly. (starring John Alderton and Pauline Collins) and Yes, Honestly (with Liza Goddard).
Writing runs in the blood. Her mother, Madeleine Mary Abel, was a playwright – "There was great excitement when Queen Mary came to see one of her plays just after the war and laughed" – and theatrical friends frequently held court in the family drawing room. When he finally put down his spymaster's swordstick (yes, he really carried one and kept a gun at home in a drawer) her father, a relative of Lord Lucan, turned to writing thrillers.
In the 1990s John Le Carre confirmed that Clanmorris was the inspiration for George Smiley, the quietly-spoken intelligence officer who features in his greatest novels, including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Charlotte regarded her father with respect "verging on terror": "If you're the daughter of an MI5 you don't want to be late back from a party," she laughs.
"When we watched Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on TV we couldn't believe it because Alec Guinness had never met my father yet he had his way of speaking. He had picked up his habit of polishing his glasses on his tie, all the little things he used to do."
Charlotte says she always believed the British were more drawn to The Archers than collective farming, but she could see things from her father's point of view: the threat of "Reds under the bed" seemed very real in her teens. "And it's still real if you think about it," she says. "We've only recently had Reds in Salisbury."
Spies and Stars, with its gentle caricatures of the family's grand friends and theatrical lodgers, conjures up the village-like Kensington of old: "You could cross the road in your dressing gown to borrow a cup of milk. It was very safe. As children we all played in the parks, we took our dogs and our roller skates and off we went."
A harbinger of change coming is a visit from a rich couple, draped in jewellery and furs. "Everyone we knew was still wearing well-cut tweeds from before the war," says Charlotte. "If I walked down Sloane Street with my grandmother and she saw somebody wearing Dior's New Look [launched in 1947], she would cross the road. She was appalled because they were using so much material when there was clothes rationing. To proper people, displaying such extravagance very shocking and not done."
In polite society, television was also beyond the pale. When she and Terence began writing scripts together – with Charlotte was still working at the War Office during the day – their friends would invariably say "Nanny's got the only set", which they often joked would be the title of a joint autobiography.
She and Terence, then a student at Trinity College Dublin, met for the first time – very briefly – when she was 18 and he had been cast in a musical that transferred to London. Three years later, he turned up at her family's grand house in Kensington with a friend who was staying and was invited in for coffee: "He always said that when I walked into the kitchen he thought 'Oh! That's the girl I'm going to marry'. Extraordinary, isn't it?"
Was she smitten too? "Good Lord, no. I had no intention of falling in love with anyone. I wanted to be a great writer and I thought romance got in the way."
Now 76, with some 30 romantic novels to her credit, Charlotte lives in the beautiful Somerset rectory where they brought up their children, Candida and Matthew. Terence died in 2016, but his paintings adorn the walls and there are photographs and mementos of him in every room.
Charlotte wrote MI5 and Me as he was diagnosed with cancer and read chapters aloud to entertain him while he was having chemotherapy. He died before she had finished: "He said to me 'You've got to be strong and you've got to keep on writing', so I did. So much of what I do – and what I did – is because of him."
They both loved horses and frequently rode up the hill to Stourhead, an 18th century Palladian mansion: "On one of the rides you can see down over the lakes and it's absolutely beautiful."
They were married for 52 years. "No one has ever made me laugh as much as Terence," she says. "If we went to a dinner party I'd say to him 'I envy the women who are going to sit either side of you, they are going to have such a nice time', knowing I would probably be next to someone rather dull. We had completely different opinions about everything – religion, politics, anything you care to mention – but when we sat down to write it was as if we became one person. We had a shared imagination."
She says she is often asked the secret to a happy marriage, though, and hasn't a clue. "Some women are horrified to hear we were hardly ever apart, it's their idea of a nightmare," she says. "Happiness is so completely different for everyone in a marriage.
"Terence was always doing lovely things for me. After I'd had a baby he would buy me a very pretty frock in the next size down because he knew I wanted to lose weight. My son said the other day 'A man wouldn't dare do that now, you'd get into terrible trouble!', but I thought it was very nice and encouraging."
As well as writing their comedies and scripts for TV series such as Upstairs, Downstairs, Terence had a successful career as an actor and wrote a cookery column for a national newspaper. "And of course he played and sang beautifully," Charlotte says, gesturing toward the piano. "He used to play for me every night, very often he'd convert the lyrics, put my name in… He always said The Lady is a Tramp was my signature tune."
And she looks over fondly, as if he is sitting there, about to play the opening bars.
This article originally appeared on the Daily Telegraph.
