HE’S the scruffy spook we’ve come to know and love – but Jackson Lamb’s days are numbered. The boss of Slough House’s Slow Horses, played brilliantly by Oscar-winner Gary Oldman, can’t live forever. It’s a miracle he’s lived this long, to be honest.

Best-selling author Mick Herron, whose Slow Horses – and now Down Cemetery Road – are Wednesday night appointment-to-view on Apple TV+ – talked all things Slough House during a sell-out appearance at Stratford Literary Festival last night. 

Here are the top ten takeaways for fans of the down-at-heel spooks.

1. He knows exactly how, where, when and why Jackson Lamb will die, although it’s something he has only recently realised. When asked how long the scruffy spy may have left – he has that lingering nasty cough, of course, not to mention terminal flatuence – Herron remains coy. “It could be days; it could be weeks; it could be months; it could be years,” he teases. “It might already have happened!”

2. He has no favourite character in the Slough House crew of misfits, or at least if he has, then he’s not telling. The reason? He has a habit of building up characters until we start to care about them, then brutally killing them off – and he warns that nobody is safe. “If I said that a character was my favourite,” he explains, “then you might start to think that he or she is safe, and that wouldn’t do at all.”

3. He reckons that Roddy Ho is the most competent Slow Horse, and the only trouble is that Ho knows it. His delusions of grandeur are deliberately written to make him perhaps the most divisive character in the series. When asked who among the audience in Stratford felt that Ho was their favourite character, only a few hands went up. “Would you like to be trapped in a lift with him?” Herron teased.

4. He came up with the character Roddy Ho because of his own lack of tech know-how, and his inspiration was Barney Collier, the computer genius played by actor Greg Morris in the original Mission Impossible TV series. “If they wanted to turn all the traffic lights red in the area, he’d just tap at a keyboard and it’d happen,” Herron recalls. “I wouldn’t know where to start. Every outfit needs a tech genius.”

5. The very first member of the Slow Horses he dreamed up was Min Harper, whose exile to Slough House was based on the real-life news story Herron read in 2008 about a civil servant who accidentally left top secret documents containing intelligence on al-Qaida and Iraq security forces on a train in London, where they were later found by a member of the public. The incident sparked an investigation into Service failings.

6. He likes to mix and match his Slow Horses into different pairings in the books so he can explore new dynamics between them but says that throughout the series the most important relationship is that of Lamb and Catherine Standish, which anchors the outfit. And there’s more to come on Standish’s back story, although clues have already been planted, and will later pay off.  “Why is he protecting her?” asks Herron. 

7. The drab-looking building in London’s Aldersgate that serves as Slough House in the TV series is not only real, but the very place that Herron used to pass on his daily commute, and was his inspiration. But they’re not the scruffy surrounds you see on the show. Herron says some of the property came up for sale and when he took a look on Rightmove, they were actually quite posh inside.

8. He says another reason for the siting of the Slow Horses HQ was that the real building brought back memories of childhood, when the family of six lived in a flat above his father’s opticians shop, and where Herron would often be found sitting under the table, reading a book. They usually entered the flat via a back door in the yard. What’s the betting that the back door tended to stick at times?

9. He says he’s blown away by the star-studded cast of the TV show, and that Jack Lowden, in particular, is a close fit for the River Cartwright he imagined. He isn’t, however, influenced by the small screen portrayal of his characters when he comes to writing their further adventures, nor does he object to changes made in his storylines for the TV adaptations, arguing that there’s room for both versions.

10. He is closely involved in the TV series, and will be credited as Executive Producer on the upcoming season six. He has a place in the writing room when the storyline is fleshed out, and is always welcome on set. He and his wife have also made several Hitchcock-like cameo appearances, including “couple leaving Chinese restaurant”. Watch out for him sitting next to Diana Taverner at a funeral next time out!

Herron plans well ahead, by the way.

There’s a scene towards the end of Slough House, the seventh book in the series handed to his publisher in 2020, in which River Cartwright uses his mobile phone to take a six-second video sweep of his late grandfather’s library. He actually films it to catch a sleeping house guest whose identity I won’t reveal in case you haven’t read it yet (that would be a major spoiler!).

It’s that video clip that’s the springboard for the plot of his new book Clown Town, just published, and it’s no coincidence. Herron says that he wrote the seemingly throwaway scene precisely because he knew how he could make it pay back five years later. That being so, he has probably planted plenty of other seeds that are quietly germinating, ready to blossom in future books.

Oh, and one last thing. The character he’d most like to have a dinner date with is … Diana Taverner, played so stylishly by Kristin Scott-Thomas in the TV series. “But it’d be brief,” he admits. “And we wouldn’t have much to say to each other”. 

Mick Herron’s Clown Town, published by Baskerville, is out now, priced £22. Slow Horses returns to Apple TV+ next year, with a sixth season based on the 2019 book Joe Country. Stratford Literary Festival continues today and tomorrow at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon. See the festival website for listings and late ticket availability. Images: Apple TV+, Stratford Literary Festival.