Slow Horses: Mick Herron says post-Brexit anger made his Slough House books more relevant to the national mood

It’s difficult to imagine a time when the Slough House books weren’t a publishing phenomenon which then became a streaming TV hit.

But there was, and for a number of years.

Mick Herron, the dry-witted author of the now-popular novels, actually lost his publisher after the first book came out and underperformed. Imagine whoever made that call might be regretting it now.

In the past 16 years, Herron has released nine novels and five novellas set in the world of Slough House, a sort-of dumping ground for disgraced MI5 agents who have earnt the ire of their bosses either through incompetence, stuff-ups or personality defects.

Once you’re in Slough House, there’s no way back to the main game. Just ask the unit’s boss, the slovenly and cantankerous Jackson Lamb, played in the TV adaptation with unhygienic relish by Gary Oldman.

Lamb, with his dismissive tone and air of olfactory stench, is about as opposite as you could get from George Smiley, John le Carre’s great spy character that Oldman has also embodied, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

The series has already released five seasons since 2022 with another one already filmed and a seventh in production. It has slowly become a beloved stalwart of the more recent streaming era.

Herron, who appeared at the Sydney Writers Festival across two events, one a solo in-conversation, and another about adaptations, has two theories on why the Slough House books finally entered the public consciousness in a significant way.

The first was that when he changed publishers, he began working with a team that knew how to create word-of-mouth buzz, including one instance in which 10,000 copies of Slow Horses was given away at London tube stations with the free Evening Standard paper.

He experienced it for himself as he had commuted into town from his Oxford home for an event, and alighted the train and onto a platform in central London where everyone was holding a copy of his book.

The other was, he posited, was Brexit.

“There was a kind of mood change in the country,” Herron told the audience at Sydney Writers Festival. “My books, the tone of the books, appealed to people more post-Brexit than they have pre-Brexit because everybody was pissed off from Brexit.”

The world Herron had created and captured was one that was a snarky and dark, filled with corrupt politicians, ambitious and narcissistic careerists, bad state actors, and those that would do harm – and the people you had to rely on to foil those plans were f—k-ups.

It’s a relatable vibe, and the ultimate underdog story where the would-be heroes were not virtuous and wholesome, but messed-up and out-of-their-depth. That can be a seductive milieu for readers – and viewers – contending with the increasingly farcical and distressing nature of political scandal and news events.

Herron has been credited by the Slow Horses TV writer Will Smith (not that Will Smith) for being prescient when it comes to the pulse of current affairs, which are then reflected in the streaming series.

The most recent season featured a plotline involving a nativist politician (likely modelled after Nigel Farage), the surge of anti-immigration sentiment and political violence, with the first episode being released within weeks of a massive far-right rally in central London.

Of course, the show was filmed months earlier, written well before that, and being drawn from a book that Herron published in 2018.

But the writer revealed that he is cognisant to not too closely rip from the headlines, although he had pulled from the ineptitude of the Russian agents behind the Salisbury poisonings for Slough House, the seventh book in his series.

Asked if he was commenting on contemporary politics through his novels, Herron said, “It’s become increasingly important, but generally for my own satisfaction rather than a feeling that I’m trying to mirror political reality as the years go by.

“The difficulty with doing it is, of course, the thing that I write now will see the light of day in probably two years’ time.

“So, doing very specific references to very specific instances of, you know, political malfeasance or whatever, they’re going to get lost very quickly because between now and two years’ time, they’re going to be other instances of political malfeasance that people will confuse it with.

“I just rely on more general, broad brushstrokes, and I assume that if I’m writing about politicians who are corrupt, self-interested, lacking any form of principle, then that’s not going out of fashion.”