Slow Horses

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes portrayals of racist and sexist attitudes and language, and expletives, and makes reference to alcohol dependency, extremist terrorist activity, kidnapping, threat, violence, violent death, and death by suicide.

Slow Horses makes continual reference to the Cold War spy thrillers that precede it, particularly the novels of John le Carré, to set up a contrast between the old days of spying and the modern nature of espionage. The characters also speak about the Cold War with nostalgia and regret as a lost time when the spy’s mission and purpose was clearly drawn. The Slough House series takes place in 2010, the modern era of forever wars, foreign terrorism, and cyberattacks, where the old Cold War distinctions between the good guys and the bad guys are blurred, at best. Shifting geopolitical allegiances and destabilized centers of power have fundamentally altered the ways in which spies operate, within their own bureaucracy and out in the field.

It is no wonder, then, that Jackson Lamb’s Slough House environs are dominated by gloom and decay. Not only is the location considered a backwater, far from the central hub of Regent’s Park, and populated by exiled agents, but it is also a place that symbolizes the arc of Lamb’s career as an aging Cold War “warrior.