Last night at Books & Books, Alan Furst, the popular novelist of Second World War intrigue, read from his new novel, The Spies of Warsaw.

I had read it quickly over the weekend, carried along by the story of a French military attache working in his country's embassy in Poland in 1937. What attracted me to the story was not just the setting - Warsaw, where I lived in the late 70s and early 80s - but the subject. In 1979, during an interview about my visa, I was offered an extension if I became an informer. I declined, and left the country three days later.

About 60 people gathered in the bookstore last night to hear Furst speak. He prefaced his reading by saying that, of all his novels, this was the one with the most resonance to today. I was surprised at first, as the book's pre-war atmosphere kept taking me back to the Cold War.

But he described this as his "9/10 book." And he explained that the military attache gathers vital information about an impending German attack on France which none of his superiors take very seriously. Hard evidence is presented and the people in power opt to ignore it.