‘The symbiosis of author and editor, father and son, has resulted in a brilliant book, le Carré’s final masterpiece’ 5*, Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph
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A Private Spy spans seven decades and chronicles not only le Carré’s own life but the turbulent times to which he was witness. Beginning with his 1940s childhood, it includes accounts of his National Service and his time at Oxford, and his days teaching the ‘chinless, pointy-nosed gooseberry-eyed British lords’ at Eton. It describes his entry into MI5 and the rise of the Iron Curtain, and the flowering of his career as a novelist in reaction to the building of the Berlin Wall. Through his letters we travel with him from the Second World War period to the immediate moment in which we live. We find le Carré writing to Sir Alec Guinness to persuade him to take on the role of George Smiley, and later arguing the immorality of the War on Terror with the chief of the German internal security service. What emerges is a portrait not only of the writer, or of the global intellectual, but, in his own words, of the very private, very passionate and very real man behind the name.
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Includes letters to:
John Banville
William Burroughs
John Cheever
Stephen Fry
Graham Greene
Sir Alec Guinness
Hugh Laurie
Ben Macintyre
Ian McEwan
Gary Oldman
Philip Roth
Philippe Sands
Sir Tom Stoppard
Margaret Thatcher
And more…

From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer, John le Carré has lived a unique life.

In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive – reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he’s interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison or watching Alec Guinness preparing for his role as George Smiley, this book invites us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.

Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer’s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.

‘No other writer has charted – pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers – the public and secret histories of his times’ Guardian

‘When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré . . . These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind’ Aung San Suu Kyi

With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carre’s taut, thrilling spy novels.

Call for the Dead is the first Smiley novel, which sees him looking into an apparent suicide only to uncover a murderous conspiracy;

A Murder of Quality finds Smiley investigating a murder in a private school;

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold introduces Alec Leamas, a British intelligence officer whose East Berlin network is in tatters;

The Looking Glass War features former spy Fred Leiser, lured back from retirement to investigate a claim that Soviet missiles are being installed close to the West German border;

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the first book in the Karla trilogy, and sees Smiley searching for a mole who has infiltrated the Circus;

The Honourable Schoolboy sees Smiley determined to destroy his nemesis, Karla, and his spy networks;

Smiley’s People finds George Smiley called out of retirement to exorcise some Cold War ghosts from his clandestine past;

The Secret Pilgrim sees Smiley invited to dine with the eager new recruits at the Circus. He offers them his thoughts on espionage and, in doing so, prompts a former colleague to re-examine his own eventful secret life.

‘A radio triumph…Simon Russell Beale’s pitch-perfect master spy’ – “Financial Times”.

Duration: 19 hours.

After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the man’s death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan’s widow to find out what could have led him to such desperation. But on the very day that Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man. Do the East Germans – and their agents – know more about this man’s death than the Circus previously imagined? Le Carré’s first book, Call for the Dead, introduced the tenacious and retiring George Smiley in a gripping tale of espionage and deceit.

If you enjoyed Call for the Dead, you might like le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

‘Intelligent, thrilling, surprising … makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense’ Observer