It is possible that the episodes relating to Widmerpool's spying career are drawn from the activities of Denis Nowell Pritt, a Labour MP who was expelled from the party for his pro-Soviet stance.[67] Powell's biographer Michael Barber wrote that Cyril Connolly declared his long-standing enemy, the art historian Douglas Cooper, to be a Widmerpool prototype; Cooper's companion John Richardson thought that Connolly was joking.[68]