If you think of George Washington as someone who couldn’t tell a lie, you probably haven’t been watching AMC’s “Turn: Washington’s Spies.”
The Revolutionary War drama’s fourth and final season premiered June 17. Alexander Rose, who wrote “Washington’s Spies,” the book about the Culper spy ring on which the show is based, spoke with Ellen Gray about what he has learned about writing for television, and why Benedict Arnold’s Philadelphia-born wife reminds him of a character on “The Sopranos.” Here, edited and condensed, is their conversation:
One thing both your book and the series did was change my impression of George Washington. He seems to have been really involved in the nitty-gritty aspects of the Culper spy ring.
At a time when espionage was regarded as an ungentlemanly occupation, Washington was actually a natural at spying the daylights out of the British. He was an innately cautious and skeptical individual, which are precisely the attributes you want in a good spymaster. And he used those talents to enormous effect with the Culper ring. And they had this strange relationship to Washington. He served as a father figure to them, virtually for the entirety of the war. The Culpers were George Washington’s personal spy ring, and he took a great amount of interest in them and what they could achieve for him and the war effort at large.