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The Doherty Bunch

Recruiting your own children as spies
by
April 2021, no. 430

With My Little Eye: The incredible true story of a family of spies in the suburbs by Sandra Hogan

Allen & Unwin, $29.99 pb, 240 pp

The Doherty Bunch

Recruiting your own children as spies
by
April 2021, no. 430
Dudley and Joan Doherty on a night out in Sydney (photograph supplied)
Dudley and Joan Doherty on a night out in Sydney (photograph supplied)

Here’s a story about a spy with a wooden leg, another spy who liked to sit around with his penis exposed, and a spy’s daughter who spent decades refusing to believe her father was dead. If this tale of an everyday family of secret agents were a novel or a Netflix drama, we’d laugh, frown, and admire it as a surreal fantasy. But it is real, the children are still alive, and their recollections are proof that truth is nuttier than fiction.

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