Names

Here is a list of characters, I've tried to group them logically / chronologically. Let's start off with the main character:

Eva Delectorskaya becomes Eve Dalton in 1939, also Margery Allerdice and Lily Fitzroy. we meet Eve first as mother and grandmother Sally Gilmartin. Other name changes come later.

Oxford 1976

Ruth Gilmartin - Sally Gilmartin's daughter

Jochen - her son

Ruth's students

Hugues Corbillard

Bérangère Wu

Hamid Kazemi 

The Amberson family - fictional family talked about in Ruth's lessons

Karl-Heinz - Jochen's father

Ludger - Karl-Heinz's brother

Ilse - a friend of Ludger

Veronica Briggstock - fellow single mother from the nursery Grindles

Averil - Veronica's daughter and Jochen's best friend

Mr Scott - Ruth's landlord and dentist

Robert York - Ruth's PHD supervisor

Sean Gilmartin - Ruth's deceased father

Alisdair - Sally's deceased brother

Paris 1939

Kolia - Eva's deceased brother

Sergei Pavlovitch Delectoski - Eva & Kolia's father

Irène Argenton - Sergei's second wife

Maria / Masha - Eva & Kolia's mother, died 1929 in Tienstin, China

Mr Frellon - Eva's boss in Paris 

Lucas Romer - Kolia worked for him, he recruits Eva. 

Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve - Romer's later title

Scotland 1939

Staff Sergeant Law - runs Lyne Manor

Evans - Law's stand-in

Others training / observing in Lyne Manor

Jerzy - a Polish man

Mrs Diana Terme

Dennis Trelawny

Ostend

Team at Agence d'Information Nadal

Silvia Rhys Meyer - Eve's work and flat mate

Morris Devereux

Angus Woolf

Alfie Bythswood

Higher up the spy scale

C

Mr X

Prenslo

Lt. Joos -  Dutch intelligence officer

2 British Agents - not named

A bald young man

Some Germans

Cafe Backus, Prenslo

London 1940

Deirdre - administrator / secretary of AAS ( Actuarial & Accountancy Services)

The same team as in Ostend

Mrs Dangerfield - Lily Fitzroy's ( ie Eve's) landlady in Battersea

Also mentioned

Jean-Didier - a previous lover of Eve, musician friend of Kolia

USA

Wilber Johnson - owner - manager of WNLR, a radio station that Eve runs

Paul Witoldski - manager of other radio station near Canadian boarder she runs

Transoceanic Press (Agence Nadal in disguise)

Same team as in Ostend and London

Aleksandr Nekich - professor at John Hopkins University. really a defected NKVD officer. He dies before Morris Devereux can meet him.

Next time acronyms and organisations

Meanwhile, here is an excerpt from an interview with William Boyd from the website Gransnet. It gives some historical background on what happened at Prenslo, although I've edited out a tiny bit so as not to spoil the surprise!  

Q: I think the Prenslo incident in the book is based on the real-life Venlo incident on the Dutch-German border? I wanted to ask why the agent gave Eva the wrong code word? Surely if it was all a set-up he would have given her the one she was expecting? I know this is a point of detail but it is really bothering me! 

And why does her explanation have such a positive impact on the top brass? The Brits were duped and it's hard to see why the fact the agent said Amsterdam rather than Paris (or possibly the other way round) would have improved the situation. flopsybunny

A: Yes, you're absolutely right. The Venlo incident was a massive secret service cock-up (and has been brushed far under the carpet). You could argue that there was a mole in the Dutch secret service (it was a combined operation) that allowed the Germans to snatch two top british spies at Venlo. In my "Prenslo" version I wanted Eva to sense something was going wrong. The Dutch agent had been wrongly briefed on the double-password. The sort of error that can so easily happen during operations.

The Venlo incident was a disaster for the British at the start of the war. Their whole spy network in northern Europe was compromised by this kidnapping. Hence all the fuss by the top brass.

Careful if you read the whole interview!

Here is a link to a more detailed explanation of Venlo