Adam Sisman

A complex, driven, unhappy man: the truth about John le Carré

The author's private life, revealed in letters and a kiss-and-tell

(Credit: Getty images)

It is often said that the age of letter-writing is past. This forecast seems to me premature. I have edited three volumes of letters, in each case by writers labelled (though not by me) as ‘the last of their kind’. Yet here is another one, and I feel confident that more will follow. Few now write letters, but those who still do tend to take care what they write. And it will be some decades before we have used up the legacy of the living.

John le Carré, who died almost two years ago at the age of 89, was one such. His work is likely to be reassessed over the next few years and his place in the canon is not yet secure. But he is undoubtedly the pre-eminent spy writer of modern times, and arguably the definitive chronicler of the Cold War. At his peak he was very good indeed. Philip Roth judged A Perfect Spy (1985) to be ‘the best English novel since the war’. As a novelist, le Carré aimed high, with Dickens as one of his models. Writing mattered to him perhaps more than anything else.

So it is no surprise to find his letters well-written and entertaining. In them he is by turns affectionate, touchy, encouraging, witty, self-deprecating, egotistical, kind and even (as a young man) camp. The letters provide a narrative of his life from schooldays onwards, so that it is possible to read this book as a form of autobiography – though readers should be cautious of believing everything he writes.

For one thing, he is looking over his shoulder to posterity, almost from the start. ‘I have decided to cultivate that intense, worried look and to start writing brilliant, untidy letters for future biographers,’ he writes, while he is still an obscure crime writer yet to taste success. Like a number of the other letters in this volume, this one is illustrated with a clever cartoon, a distinct bonus for the reader. (To my regret, he refused to allow me to use any of these in my biography, published in 2015.

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