For anyone nostalgic for the world of John Le Carré, the last week would have been a boon.
A former double agent and his daughter found unconscious on a park bench, allegations that Mother Russia poisoned her wayward son using a secret nerve agent ('Novichok') and diplomatic repercussions — all very much the sort of thing with which George Smiley, Le Carré's fictional MI6 spook would have been very much at home. However, before assuming that life imitates art, it would be well to check our facts — not least because stumbling into war with a nuclear power seems a silly thing to do.
While the Skripals are still in hospital and, as far as we know, haven't said much about the incident, a great deal has been alleged. Even to a non-chemist such as myself, much of this does not add up when stacked against information in the public domain.
First, while Skripal undoubtedly was a double agent (apparently turning on his Russian employers for financial gain, rather than out of conviction), he served four years of a 13 year sentence before being pardoned and swapped for Russian spies (Anna Chapman and her colleagues) back in 2010. His daughter, Yulia, visited Russia frequently.
No-one has explained why Russia would wish harm to a superannuated double agent some 20 years after his glory days and eight years after freeing him from custody. If they really had wanted the man dead, a convenient accident could surely have been arranged while he was still in prison.
Given that relations between Russia and the West are already at rock bottom and given Russia's current situation (elections and the hosting of the World Cup soccer tournament coming up in a matter of months) the timing seems even more surprising.
Second, it is far from clear that the nerve agent at the centre of the drama was ever successfully made by the Russians, let alone that they are the only possible culprits. Novichok ('newbie' in Russian) was alleged to be the name given to a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviets in the late 1970s, so secret that it was not declared when Russia signed onto the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1992.
"While it would be reassuring to be able to take government declarations on intelligence agencies' conclusions at face value, we have a lot of experience of late of politicised or even wholly invented intelligence."
Until 2016, the only proof we