Ian McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty audiobook of betrayal and intrigue, love, as well as the invented self.

Serena Frome, the stunning daughter of an Anglican bishop, includes a short affair with a mature man during her last 12 months at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence services. The year is certainly 1972. Britain, confronting financial disaster, has been torn aside by commercial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of crisis. The Cold Battle has moved into a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, specifically in the ethnic sphere.

Serena, a compulsive audience of novels, is certainly sent on a ‘secret mission’ which brings her into the literary globe of Tom Haley, a guaranteeing young article writer. First she loves his stories, then she starts to love the man. Can she keep up with the fiction of her undercover life? And who’s inventing whom? To solution these questions, Serena must reject the first guideline of espionage – trust no-one.

The Lovely Tooth audiobook is beautifully narrated by Juliet Stevenson.