I don't understand why this man is being treated as a hero. It doesn't matter what his secret work was - he had no right to involve innocent women and sire so many illegitimate children in an era when both the mothers and the children were stigmatized for this. It is never made clear whether he did indeed spin stories of a vast network of spies in Egypt or whether he was telling the truth. It seems to me that it would have been quite easy for the intelligence service to put another Arab speaker on his line and check whether his reports were accurate. His Indian controller claims he was telling the truth - that there was a network of spies in Egypt - if this was so why was it ignored? Why replace him with a liar? It makes no sense. Why sack him? Why not simply move him to a desk job where there was no classified information. One has to ask why he would need a handler for twenty years if he had indeed been sacked from the service in 1942. To watch him? It would have been far easier and effective to kill him. Another question would be why did he work as a hospital porter for years if he was a spy - was this his cover job? How did he keep so many families fed on a porter's wages and his book writing income - he couldn't - his last wife had to go live with her mother to feed the children - so how did his other families live? It seemed like half a story to me. They should have delved deeper into what was really going on.