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.