Nine To Noon How British writer Mick Herron created his slobby super spy: Slow Horses' Jackson Lamb
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Mar 26, 2026 Mick Herron, British novelist behind the Slough House Slow Horses series, talks craft and character. He explains how Jackson Lamb arrived by accident and why he writes character-first. He discusses commuting routines, themes of failure and politics, and how contemporary events like Brexit and 7/7 shape his spy stories.
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Commute Became Thinking Time For Writing
- Herron used his Oxford–London commute as thinking time rather than writing time, spending an hour after returning home to write.
- He avoided writing on trains to keep the process private, instead staring out the window and composing in his head.
Real Building Became Fictional Slough House
- Mick Herron used a real squat four-storey building on Aldersgate Street he passed daily as the seed for Slough House.
- He imagined it filled with disgraced spies in purgatory and then invented Jackson Lamb as a boss whose job was to make their lives miserable.
Spies Let Fictional Freedom Beat Police Accuracy
- Writing about intelligence services let Mick invent processes freely because they publish little, unlike police procedural accuracy demands.
- That research aversion pushed the series toward spies and allowed politics and secrecy to drive larger plots.
