The revelation at the weekend that former Lloyd's chief executive Peter Middleton was an MI6 spook may have come as a surprise to some.
The 63 year-old admitted to the Mail on Sunday that he once worked with spy chief Sir Richard Dearlove as a field agent in Paris. The ex-monk was tasked with infiltrating the French Communist movement to gather information and pass it back to London.
By the time he joined Lloyd's in the early 1990s, however, his cloak-and-dagger days were over. But, very similar to Lloyd's, he left MI6 with a "hefty sum".
The big shock for Backchat was seeing him described as "one of Britain's leading businessmen".
How come? Answers on an email, please.
