Ruchir Joshi | | Published 22.12.20, 02:12 AM
It feels odd to lose James Bond and George Smiley within six weeks of one another. It’s true that Sean Connery had last played Bond nearly 40 years ago, and actually left the classic 007 behind much earlier. Likewise, David Cornwell/John le Carré’s
oeuvre consists of a lot more than just the Smiley novels he had finished the quintessential ones by 1979, again just over 40 years ago. However, Bond was what made Connery a household name and many would say the Smiley novels were the pinnacle of le Carré’s output. The realization hits that the passing of Connery and Cornwell in quick succession signals for people like me the end of a schizophrenic, stereophonic era, a termination of a bifurcated, twinned, double helix of a narrative that spins out over 60 years.