Gender Male First appearance Spooks Last appearance Series 10, Episode 6 | Portrayed by Simon Russell Beale Occupation Home Secretary (2010) | |
Similar Dimitri Levendis, Ben Kaplan, Beth Bailey, Maya Lahan, Juliet Shaw | ||
William Towers MP is the Home Secretary in the ninth and tenth series of the BBC television drama Spooks. He is portrayed by actor Simon Russell Beale. Towers is appointed after the election of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.
In the tenth series, he has Harry's tribunal stopped and reinstates him as Head of Section D. He reveals that this is because the death of Osama Bin Laden and the revolutions in the Middle East were causing a new chain of events that could end up with fundamentalist taking power and therefore declaring state support for terrorist organizations. As a bid to separate themselves from the US's negative image, the UK is attending a secret summit with Russia to discuss a new special relationship between their two countries. Towers was responsible for bringing Ilya and Elena Gavrik into the country so as to prepare the negotiations.
In the third episode, he asks Ruth Evershed to dinner where he offers her a job as his new security adviser, a job she accepts in episode four and takes up in the fifth episode.
Although Towers is through and through a politician and clashes with Harry when intelligence matters rivals with the UK's current interests, he is one of Harry's strongest allies and always indulges him as much as he can. He even said in their first meeting that he considered him a hero. It was only reluctantly that Towers handed him over to the CIA in the tenth series and he promised to support him in whatever decision he made about his future at MI5 after Ruth's death.