New Times,
New Thinking.

John le Carré’s acts of deception

Even in his love affairs, the spy novelist used tradecraft. Has his double life come to overshadow his work?

By William Boyd

Towards the end of 1990 the New York Times asked me to review the latest novel by John le Carré, The Secret Pilgrim. I was already an avid consumer of Le Carré’s work, having read almost all the novels up to A Perfect Spy (1986), and accepted the commission immediately. I wrote a largely positive review (I was not and am not an uncritical admirer), little realising that this was to be the beginning of an intermittent literary-journalistic connection with the man and his work that has now lasted 30-odd years. As well as some of the novels since The Secret Pilgrim I’ve reviewed Adam Sisman’s biography and Le Carré’s curious autobiography. I’ve written a forensic analysis of Le Carré’s idiosyncratic writing style, the introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics edition of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and a lengthy A-Z of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy when Tomas Alfredson’s film adaptation was released in 2011.

I never met David Cornwell, to give his real name, though we shared mutual friends and acquaintances. In 2007 we spoke a few times on the phone when I tried – in vain – to persuade him to appear in the 100th issue of Granta magazine, which I was guest-editing. It will be clear that the Le Carré connection, though not remotely intimate, is fairly substantial. Somehow, John Le Carré has become one of the authors I have written about most, joining a small club that includes Anton Chekhov, Muriel Spark and Evelyn Waugh.

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