A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré 1945-2020

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This irony recurs in his letters: Le Carré repeatedly offers withering indictments of the powers he served, but he never seems to cast them aside. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. So often, ambition in public life can be tethered to achievement in the moment—rising through the ranks, reaching the heights of bureaucracy or political office. What we saw was what we got: a nasty little establishment traitor with a revolting father, a fake stammer and an anguished sexuality who spent his life getting his own back on the England that made him. In the early letters, shame and a moralizing streak—qualities, again, that many of his characters inherited—bring out le Carré’s most forceful writing.

There is, however, a letter from 2001, from le Carré, addressed to two executives from the pharmaceutical giant Novartis.F4’s remit was to recruit spies of both sexes, to motivate, befriend, brief, counsel, debrief, pay and welfare them.

If the fire’s a bit low sometimes, that’s bloody age and a lot of family stuff I won’t bore you with. To le Carré, the real tragedy was the wreckage of human lives all around: “The problem of the Cold War is that, as Auden once wrote, we haunt a ruined century. This collection is a treasure trove, revealing the late author’s humour, generosity, and wit–a side of him many readers have not previously seen.Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal.