A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré 1945-2020

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So this letter is to express, and thank you, for all that & more, and to renew my vows to you without qualification & to point to greater happiness in the future, & a growing love, filling & defining the spirit, a growing spirituality too, &, I believe, an intensifying harmony & mutual appreciation. In the immediate aftermath of the erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, Le Carré was sent to assess its consequences. As with his time at Eton, familiarity with the FO and MI6 seemed to deepen his contempt for such institutions and their ethos. The harsh portrayal of the Bonn embassy in A Small Town in Germany (1968) gave serious offence to old colleagues. I bought this more in hope of retaining a link with the work of a treasured author than in any expectation of finding the usual le Carré gems. And what a pleasant surprise. As the reader follows David Cornwell from callow youth through to a dying, but flawed giant, you get a real sense of the man's humanity, his foibles, the inner fire that drove him, and -not least - some uncensored (it seems) le Carré rants about the state of the world, various politicians, other writers. By then, time and illness were shaking the knots from a tangled life. Two weeks before the end, when he and his second wife, Jane, are both dying from cancer, he writes to a friend: “Everything is waiting. We have never been so close — yet far away too, because death, looming or simply out there — is a very private matter, & each of us does it in their own way.” Some actors can act intelligent. Others are intelligent and come over dull, because of some mannerism which gets in the way. And a very few are intelligent and convey it: in Tinker Tailor, this gift will be pure gold, because it gives such base to the other things – the solitude, the moral concern, the humanity of Smiley – all, because of the intelligence of his perceptions, grow under our eyes and in your care.

Letters of John le Carré 1945-2020 A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré 1945-2020

This article was amended on 13 January 2021. An earlier version said The Night Manager was adapted for TV by Susanne Bier. It was David Farr who should have been credited in that regard. Bier was the director. Thanks so much for your very touching letter. Your feelings about Brexit spoke into my heart. Just now I wd rather be Dutch, German, French, or for that matter Polish, than a Brit subjected to this truly shaming process in which we are engaged. .... The author with Gary Oldman at the premiere of ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, London 2011. Photograph: WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy

A Delicate Truth, Le Carré’s 23rd novel, published in 2013, belongs to the brave new world of outsourcing, extraordinary rendition, and the war on terror. It is written with a ferocious anger. His bitter disappointment at New Labour, and its free market theology, made A Delicate Truth a testament to the continuing power of a writer by then in his 80s. John le Carré's home in Cornwall, England which was recently put up for sale. Image sourced from RightMove Co. UK. [Note: Links were working as of October 3, 2023. Image and link may no longer be available once the house is sold.] The Naive and Sentimental Lover was poorly received. (“The book is a disastrous failure” – TLS.) Reviewers and readers knew what kind of book they wanted from Le Carré, and he was henceforth ruefully prepared to accept the reading public’s judgment.

John le Carré. My mother was his My father was famous as John le Carré. My mother was his

It’s not hard to see why. In Smiley’s People — the third act of the trilogy of masterly Cold War novels that began with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — le Carré's ruthless Russian spymaster, Karla, schemes to protect his only weak point, the small, broken thing at the heart of his being, his schizophrenic, secret child. To smuggle her to safety from his enemies in Russia, Karla sends an agent to the west to find a discreet mental hospital and a convincing false identity, “a legend for a girl”. John le Carré was a defining writer of his time. This enthralling collection letters - written to readers, publishers, film-makers and actors, politicians and public figures - reveals the playfully intelligent and unfailingly eloquent man behind the penname. An archive of letters written by the late John le Carré, giving listeners access to the intimate thoughts of one of the greatest writers of our time. The never-before-seen correspondence of John le Carré, one of the most important novelists of our generation, is collected in this beautiful volume. During his lifetime, le Carré wrote numerous letters to writers, spies, politicians, artists, actors and public figures. This collection is a treasure trove, revealing the late author's humor, generosity, and wit—a side of him many listeners have not previously seen.Of course, only fans of John le Carré will want to read this book. But for those of us who are, and who have read all his books, this one is catnip.