From the NS Archive: The secrets of John le Carré 5 February 1999: John le Carré: A literary barbarian? Or a writer to whom future generations will turn for insights into our times?
In 1999, Jason Cowley, now the editor of the New Statesman, wrote this profile of John le Carré. The espionage novelist, he said, was a figure of fascination in the literary world, not least because he polarised the debate between the “literary” and the “genre” novel. But, thought Cowley, his importance extended far beyond that; the secretive writer, who purposely withdrew from the metropolitan book world and the publicity duties that were part of being an author, was a sort of seer. His understanding of the Cold War and the ways it manifested the mentalities of the combatants was more than the stuff of fiction; it was a reflection of the great issue of the time. It also reflected Britain as it was, not as how it wanted to be: le Carré, Cowley said, possessed an “intricate understandi
BBC News
By Gordon Corera paying tribute to his evocative and brilliant novels would have raised a wry smile from John le Carré. The writer s relationship with his former colleagues was always deeply complicated - as has been their attitude towards him.
Le Carré s career was shaped by his time in the secret world and, in turn, his own fiction shaped the way much of the world saw British intelligence, including the way even spies talked about themselves.
Writers often draw on real life experience but because le Carré s experience was inside a world that was secret - and much more secret in his time than today - it is particularly hard to know where fact ends and fiction begins, creating a mystery whose value he understood.
le Carré remains an enigma even to himself . In
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) George Smiley is recalled from retirement to investigate whether there is a double agent, or “mole”, operating at the highest level of the intelligence service, which John le Carré calls the Circus. Melancholy and introspective - le Carré writes of the aged spymaster’s spiritual exhaustion - Smiley is drawn back reluctantly into a crepuscular world of secrets and subterfuge, where even long-time friends and associates cannot be trusted. Smiley, le Carré writes, had that art, from miles and miles of secret life, of listening at the front of his mind; of letting the primary incidents unroll directly before him while another, quite separate faculty wrestled with their historical connection .