Still writing after all these years.

Eric Ambler is hard at work on his next book. Repeat: that's Eric Ambler, who, beginning in the mid-1930s, wrote a succession of classic thrillers that blazed a trail for two generations of writers of political-suspense novels.

"Not long ago, while I was doing a program for the BBC overseas service," he said, "one of the bright young broadcasters mentioned my writing, and then he said, `That book is by Mr. Eric Ambler and, incredible as it may seem, he's still alive.'"

Recalling the remark, Ambler cocked an eyebrow above his pale-blue eyes, looking more amused than chagrined that anyone seemed surprised at the news he was still above ground. "I suppose there are some young people around . . . " he began to say, but didn't bother to finish the thought.

Ambler makes you realize that a seasoned writer doesn't retire; he continues to write, in his head if not on paper, even if he's in his eighty-sixth year.

We were dining in a pricey restaurant five minutes by taxi from his London home. Rather than talk about longevity, Ambler preferred to take a tour d'horizon of his career, with emphasis on the future: his novel in progress. He appeared elegant in a blazer, white shirt with widespread collar, pink-and-blue striped tie, brown suede shoes. A walking stick ("it was the arthritis thing that got me"), parked next to our banquette, was his only visible concession to age.

Obviously, the young broadcaster was unfamiliar with the internal combustion engine that drives a professional writer's life. And he probably didn't know much about Ambler's score of books, including--to name only a handful--Background for Danger, Epitaph for a Spy, A Coffin for Dimitrios, The Intercom Conspiracy, and Doctor Frigo. These thrillers led the late Graham Greene to call himself one of Ambler's "disciples" and John Le Carre to say that Ambler's novels were "the well into which everybody had dipped."

In a changing world, was the thriller a thing of the past or could it still tell us something the news reports omitted?

"There's plenty of room for thrillers because there aren't too many serious novels written now," he said. "There are some bad good novels, and a few good bads. Philip Toynbee once said that I was good bad, in danger one day of becoming good good. Perhaps he meant it as a compliment. I believe my books have some relevance in a social context, unlike most serious novels today."

What's the right word for the genre? Thrillers? Intrigue? Suspense?

"I don't like the word suspense as an adjective," he said. "Any novel needs suspense. Graham Greene once labeled his thrillers `entertainments,' as if to tell the reader they weren't as important as his novels. I remember talking with Graham about his invention of the word. He had wanted to write his thrillers under a pseudonym. Okay, his publisher told him, in that case I'll give you half the usual advance. Oh, Graham replied, and dropped the idea of using another name and created the word `entertainment' to differentiate them from his other books. It's interesting to note that in his collected edition, Graham took off that label. And, as a matter of fact, by now I can't tell which are `entertainments' and which are not--they're all Greene."

I asked him why he continued hitting the keys of his typewriter every day instead of resting on laurels and royalties.

"Why do I write? Because I enjoy it--I don't really need the money," Ambler said. For a decade after World War II, he was a multi-thousand-dollar-a-week screenwriter in Hollywood. Among his screenplays are A Night to Remember, Wreck of the Mary Deare, and The Cruel Sea, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

"I did a lot of film work, including fourteen drafts of Mutiny on the Bounty for Marlon Brando, but I got off the credits," he said. Although Ambler's thrillers are easier to find in second-hand bookstores than in the big chains in the United States, his books continue to appeal to new readers in Europe. "I've been a top name in Germany," he said. "My book tours usually begin in Hamburg."

For the first time in a dozen years, Ambler is at work on a book. It's called The Scapegoat but, he quickly cautions, that is only a "provisional" title. He's more than halfway through it.

"The scapegoat is a man--an Austrian," Ambler said. "It takes place during the last thirty years in Austria, Italy, England, and America. One of the characters deals with a firm in the States that handles commodities futures in St. Petersburg. With all its retirees, Florida is as good a place as any for losing your money. Nearly all the characters are lawyers. What's unusual for me is that it's mainly about women. I've never before written a book in which the women are dominant."

He thought for a moment. "No, there are no intelligence people in it. There are civil servants, but no spies. My books always start out as straight novels. But then they move on."

Ambler's explanation sounded deliberately vague and circuitous, as if he were acting as a double agent to conceal the contents of The Scapegoat from his imitators in a crowded field. If so, he's entitled.

His thrillers have been praised for their backgrounds as well as for their endangered characters. As a matter of technique, did he spend much time researching his material in various locales?

"No, I don't visit the countries I write about for the purposes of research--that's fatal for a novelist. It's like taking a camera along. When you do, you're worried about what the camera is seeing. It becomes a filter between you and the story. If you go to a place and say to yourself, I'll get material here, you're not really receptive to stories--you're not likely to digest. I know of writers who make a lot of notes. The trouble later is that nearly all the notes go into a book. To me, a sense of place has always seemed one of the more mundane components of a writing talent, but it's obviously better to have one than not to have one. All research has to be is background. The better way is to write the story--and then go to see if the research is right. "

I wondered if his political inclinations found their way into his books, as they surely did with his friend Greene, and as they do with the current master of the thriller, Le Carre. In the past, Ambler, who studied engineering at the University of London, was especially concerned about the threat of chemical weapons. He considered chemical warfare a nastier threat than nuclear warfare because there were few inhibitions about using chemical weapons in wartime.

"Early in my life and books, I was a little to the left," he said. "I voted Labour in 1945, but that was the extent of my political involvement. What I believe in is political and social justice. I'm of the same generation as Greene. While he was hostile to America, he was never rude about it. I never put the Cold War in any of my books. Never took sides during the Cold War, not that I was a closet Communist. I always found the Cold War distasteful. For my wartime generation, it meant taking the best years of your life and turning them around. After the war, nobody wanted to return to prewar conditions. They had dreams of an improved way of life. Unfortunately, the Cold War did not help those dreams."

In The Intercom Conspiracy, written during the aerial fury of the Vietnam war and the sabre-rattling of the Cold War, Ambler equated the activities of the CIA and KGB. Attributing villainy to both intelligence agencies was a plot device used by any number of his successors in the thriller field. A central character in The Intercom Conspiracy, in dialogue that could have been delivered by a Greene or Le Carre character, sarcastically declares:

"The Central Intelligence Agency's deep devotion to the spirits of peaceful coexistence and international brotherhood is well known. It was inevitable, perhaps, that such devotion would lead them occasionally into strange and malodorous byways. In neutral Switzerland, of all places, the CIA has now allied itself with the notorious Soviet Committee of State Security, better known as the KGB, in a joint conspiracy of terror and coercion. Incredible? One would have thought so. Impossible? One would have hoped so. Unfortunately, it is the squalid truth, and we have the evidence to prove it."

Another character in the novel speaks of the relationship between the CIA and KGB as "this iniquitous East-West gangster collaboration."

Although a sense of irony ran through the conversation, Ambler didn't speak in the dark tone that characterizes the dialogue of some of his early protagonists. "I don't consider myself a political person," he said. "I don't really like politics very much. I don't admire the democratic process--it's not very uplifting."

If not democracy, what system did he like? His reply surprised me: "I admired the New Deal in America. I lived in the States for eleven years and in Switzerland for sixteen years, but I remained a British citizen. A lot of Americans hated Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he was an ideal President."

The Roosevelt era called to mind his five years of wartime service, beginning as a private in the Royal Artillery and ending as a lieutenant-colonel with the War Office, writing and producing training and documentary films in England and Italy. Captain John Houston borrowed Captain Eric Ambler to work on the famous American documentary The Battle of San Pietro, an experience that included getting bombed and strafed on the Italian front, but he received no credit for his contribution. The film was suppressed during the war because it showed a burial detail; the Army told the uniformed filmmakers it was not the business of the War Department to make antiwar movies.

Did he work on any other films with Houston in wartime or later in Hollywood? No," Ambler diffidently said, "once was enough with John."

We exchanged tales about Mark W. Clark, the vainglorious commanding general of the Fifth Army in Italy. I mentioned that when I was an Army correspondent covering the front and datelined my dispatches, "With the Fifth Army," the general's public-relations staff strongly urged me to change them to read, "With Gen. Mark W. Clark's Fifth Army." Some newly arrived correspondents succumbed to the cult of personality until they wised up.

Ambler easily topped me with a song that even British officers were requested to sing during social functions at Allied Force Headquarters in Caserta. He said it was called "The Sons of General Clark" and, a half-century later, he took delight in its imperishable lyrics:

Stand up and sing the praise

of General Clark,

Your hearts and voices raise

for General Clark,

Red, white, and blue unfurled

upon the field,

Its message flaunts Clark's sons

will never yield.

We'll fight, fight, fight with heart

and hand,

As soldiers true embattled staunch

will stand,

The Fifth's the best Army in the land,

Fight, Fight, Fight!

"The American headquarters officer who handed us the song sheet said it should be sung to the tune of `God Bless America,'" Ambler recalled. "The lyricist wasn't mentioned but I like to think it was General Clark himself."

He remembered that after the war, when he was living in Dover, his neighbor, Noel Coward, offered him some advice: "Forget all this film nonsense. Write more books. You think that you will always be able to go back to the well. That may be so, but remember this: if you stay away too long, there will come a day when you will go back and find the well dry."

Ambler did manage to balance some novel writing with screenwriting for several years, but his reputation remains with his books. I asked him what he thought about his prolific career and if--as with most dedicated popular writers--it included any regrets.

Without hesitating. he replied:

"I've never looked at myself from the outside. I have enough to do to look from the inside. I'm still writing every day. I don't see myself as a portentous figure--in 1979 or 1980, I received an O.B.E. from the Queen, an Order of the British Empire, as if there were a British Empire. If you don't have ambitions, you don't have disappointments. The object of the exercise is to entertain. I'm really not kidding. Mark you, I do not argue that means being a standup comedian and going for belly laughs. In my writing, I'm not trying to reach for intelligent scholars but people who read books and people who go to the movies. Of course, most serious novels have some relevance in a social context."

Ambler rose slowly, reached for his walking stick, straightened his shoulders and, in the style of an enigmatic Ambler character, said, "I'm a moderate elitist--or an elitist moderate. I dislike modesty--it's unbecoming."

He paused for a moment, then smiled and added, "He said with becoming modesty.