Prismatic Reflection

    Who had been keeping the Prisoner under close surveillance? At the time Chambers of the Foreign Office had resigned, or defected, perhaps they thought the Prisoner would follow suit, as such behaviour can spread through a department like wildfire.

    We know someone had been, from the picture evidence shown to the Prisoner during that de-briefing session with No.2 on the day of his arrival in the Village. It might have been the Village Administration that had kept a close watch on the Prisoner, or indeed it could have been the Prisoner’s own people. If it was his own people behind the Village, then it’s all one and the same. So the next question is why?
    I suppose this surveillance had begun before, and not because of the Prisoners act of resigning his job. After all the Prisoner was thinking of going on holiday, perhaps to Paris, maybe not. But then what about Ireland? No, bit too cold that time of the year. So if the Prisoner was thinking of going on holiday at that time, he couldn’t have been thinking about resigning from his job. So why the need for surveillance?
    Perhaps the Prisoner became suspect for some reason. Suspect enough to see him put under the closest possible surveillance. A camera behind a mirror in his own home, another over there, yes over there too! If the Prisoner was contemplating resigning his job, that meant he might have been thinking about it for some time. Something could have happened with his work, something he was forced to do, but was against his principles, and yet he did it nonetheless. Because someone’s has to do it. Someone’s got to do it! What clean someone else’s mass up? Or to be manipulated by someone else, so to achieve their own ends? Interdepartmental politics I believe it’s called. I recall how John Drake once found himself embroiled with the machinations of one General Cateret, who was using the British agent for his own personal reasons, to do with his brother -in-law who was being blackmailed. But Drake soon turned that situation on it’s head.
    It makes me wonder if the Prisoner resigned for political reasons. After all he lived in the City of Westminster. He parked his car in an underground car park just a stones throw from the Houses of Parliament. I cannot imagine that that office the Prisoner stormed into on that eventful day was at the end of a dark underground tunnel. But I can imagine that the Prisoner, having parked his car, exited that underground car park to make his way to the Houses of Parliament. And that is was in an office, somewhere in that ancient building from which those in power govern us so wisely {I had to say that, in this day and age you never know who might be reading this!} handed in his letter of resignation to a bald-headed, bespectacled man sat behind a desk. Who then passed on that letter to the Colonel, who would then most likely pass it onto Sir Charles Portland seeing as how he was head of the department.
    Whoever it was behind the surveillance of the Prisoner, they had alerted the Village, because the Administration would need to replicate The Prisoner’s home from home. And yet it was not a replica of his entire house, just the study, at least as far we know, not being privy to the rest of the Prisoner’s house in the City of Westminster.
    There are those who are of the opinion that No.1 Buckingham Place is made up of flats, that the Prisoner lived in a flat. That supposition is incorrect, as proved by the study downstairs, and the fact that when during that episode of ‘Many Happy Returns,’ when Mrs Butterworth insisted that Peter Smith, as he called himself then, should not go like that without a bath and change of clothes that the bathroom is upstairs. It could have been a shared bathroom of course, between flats, but do not even flats have their own bathrooms? The only shared bathrooms that I know of are when ‘Bed-sits’ are involved. Bed-sits being but a rented bedroom in a house, and I do not think the Prisoner lived in one of those.
    So living in a large expensive house in the City of Westminster, that would make the Prisoner to be a very important man, one perhaps the British government should not wish to lose. And so having paid for the lease on his house, and in all probability a high salary, they would wish not only to protect their investment, but also their secrets this man carried inside his head. The Prisoner seems to be higher up in the rankings of the Civil Service than normal operatives. But not as high as the Colonel, Fotheringay, or Thorpe, and certainly that of Sir Charles Portland. A trusted man, of unquestionable loyalty. But loyalties change, so do people and their ideals.
    It is unknown why the Prisoner was under such close security and by whom, although it probably was one or other of the  British government departments. It is also unknown what the reason was behind the Prisoner’s resignation, or from what job he resigned. Perhaps it was a question of time. Because people know too much, that he knew too much. It being a matter of conscience.
   With the 50^th anniversary of ‘the Prisoner.’ It strikes me, that despite all the speculation carried out by the fans and aficionados over the years and decades, that we know as little today about the Prisoner {the man himself} than we did after the series was originally screened…………………which is damn all. But that is not to say if there is one man whom we know even less about than the Prisoner, it is the Butler!

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