The Recruit

CHERUB is a fixture across both Robert Muchamore’s main series, the spinoff Aramov series, and his Henderson’s Boys series, which explains the organization’s backstory. The acronym CHERUB stands for Charles Henderson Espionage Research Unit B, and within the world Muchamore created, it began as a civilian movement in France (Unit A), where children were recruited to gain critical information from German soldiers. After working as a part of this movement, Henderson returned to Britain, where he established CHERUB (Unit B), which was initially a hodgepodge operation. After several successful missions, the British government began to see the benefit of child spies, and funding was allocated to expand CHERUB. As seen in The Recruit, the organization eventually became a well-respected arm of British Intelligence and often works closely with MI5 (the real-life British intelligence agency). CHERUB itself symbolizes the trustworthy nature of children. Founded on the premise that adults don’t suspect children of being spies, James and his fellow agents are able to infiltrate areas adult agents would struggle to access, such as Fort Harmony. It is believable for James and Amy to be sent to live with their closest living relative in Fort Harmony, and this allows them to be integrated into the group as unwilling participants who have had a new life thrust upon them. Under these circumstances, the people of Fort Harmony assume James and Amy are simply there until they can go back to where they came from, and this plausible backstory serves to cover up the spies’ true motives.

CHERUB also broadly represents What It Means to Be Afraid and Making Difficult Choices. As seen through James’s character arc, CHERUB’s classes and basic training regimen are designed to force kids into facing the worst possible situations they can imagine. By doing so, CHERUB strives to eliminate as much of the fear response as possible, the logic being that once the kids have experienced the horrifically bad, anything less won’t feel so frightening. James and Amy show the result of this training philosophy during their Fort Harmony mission. When James is believed to have contracted anthrax, both he and Amy keep their heads and jump straight to action, not panic, to do what needs to be done for James to survive. Similarly, when the police raid Fort Harmony, James is able to see through the horror of what’s happening so he can help others and extract himself from the mission without blowing his cover.