River Cartwright
The young MI5 officer exiled to Slough House.
River Cartwright is the young MI5 officer at the centre of Mick Herron's Slough House novels and the Slow Horses series, where Jack Lowden plays him. He is sent to Slough House after a training exercise goes badly wrong and wants above all to get back into the field.
Lore & Background
In the novel his mistake shuts down London's King's Cross station; in the series the blunder happens at Stansted Airport, where he takes the fall for a colleague. His grandfather is David Cartwright, a former head of MI5 known as "The Old Bastard". In the fourth series River learns that the mercenary Frank Harkness is his biological father.
More in Characters & Operatives
Elsewhere in Slow Horses
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced