The only time I met John le Carré was back in 1996, when I had just moved to London and was working as a bookseller at a branch of Waterstone’s in Hampstead. Hampstead was a suburb with plenty of famous faces. Some made their presence known more than others: Richard Madeley, for example, would enter the bookshop by flinging open the double doors with a flourish. John le Carré – David Cornwell, as he was in real life – could not have been more different. He had a new book out, The Tailor of Panama, for which he slipped in unobtrusively to sign some copies. He was polite, unprepossessing and as quietly as he arrived, he left. By the time I’d got my wits together to get him to sign something for me, he was long gone.