A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.
-- from The Honourable Schoolboy (LeCarré, 1977: p. 84).
This page is divided into sections: Articles and Interviews Online; The Books; Other Writing, The Books: In Detail; Upcoming Projects and Other Fan Sites.
I'm a fan of LeCarré in general, but I attribute my creation of this page primarily to my fascination for Smiley, especially in the Karla trilogy (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People).
Note: LeC's books are widely available; you should have no difficulty ordering through your local bookstore. You can also order through LeC's official web site, though if you're not from the UK this will result in high postage since it all goes through Amazon.co.uk.
Articles and Interviews Online
John LeCarré is a pseudonym for David Cornwell. I found these articles by rummaging around via Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, and Altavista, and by browsing at Jorn's great LeC page. (If anyone knows of any other online interviews or articles, needless to say I'd be glad to add to the list.)
Call for the Dead | |
| [Smiley:] His emotions in performing this work were mixed, and irreconcilable. It intrigued him to evaluate from a detached position what he had learnt to describe as 'the agent potential' of a human being; to devise miniscule tests of character and behaviour which could inform him of the qualities of a candidate. This part of him was bloodless and inhuman - Smiley in this role was the international mercenary of his trade, amoral and without motive beyond that of personal gratification.
Conversely it saddened him to witness in himself the gradual death of natural pleasure. Always withdrawn, he now found himself shrinking from the temptations of friendship and human loyalty; he guarded himself warily from spontaneous reaction. By the strength of his intellect, he forced himself to observe humanity with clinical objectivity, and because he was neither immortal nor infallible he hated and feared the falseness of his life. -- from Call for the Dead, Chapter 1, 'A Brief History of George Smiley'. |
Comments: Published in 1961 by Victor Gollancz Ltd. Smiley's first appearance in print: already jaded; already harassed by scheming superiors at work and marital problems at home; already brilliant and compelling. He's much lowlier in this story, though: having been booted out of operations after the war, Smiley is now a security officer who determines to find out why a man whom he'd cleared in a routine check should suddenly commit suicide. |
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A Murder of Quality | |
| Comments: First published in 1962 by Victor Gollancz Ltd. Having retired (not for the last time) from the Service, Smiley is down at Oxford writing manuscripts on German literature, when he gets dragged into investigating a sordid murder at a British public school. It's interesting seeing Smiley in a non-espionage case, but for me AMoQ is less involving than the later books. It's very much a satire of English class and sexual politics, which are so foreign and offensive to me that I become enraged, rather than engaged, even by the humour. |
[A description of Smiley:] "'Looks like a frog, dresses like a bookie, and has a brain I'd give my eyes for. Had a very nasty war. Very nasty indeed.'"
-- from A Murder of Quality, p. 32. |
| Links: According to the IMDb, AMoQ was made into a 1991 British TV series, starring Denholm Elliot as Smiley. I haven't seen it, but the ratings at IMDb are positive. One fan wrote me to comment: "By the way, I have seen Denholm Elliot as Smiley in A Murder of Quality... Dare I blaspheme and say that he MAY have been a better Smiley than Guinness??? Then again, Guinness was awfully good..." If Denholm is as good as Guiness, the series would be well worth watching! (And thanks for the comments, Jack!) | |
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold | |
| Control went on: 'The ethic of our work, as I understand it, is based on a single assumption. That is, we are never going to be aggressors. Do you think that's fair?'....
'Thus we do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things'; he grinned like a schoolboy. 'And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can't compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now?'.... 'I mean, you've got to compare method with method, and ideal with ideal. I would say that since the war, our methods -- ours and those of the opposition -- have become much the same. I mean you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now? ... That would never do.' .... 'That is why,' Control continued, 'I think we ought to try and get rid of Mundt . . . ' -- from The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, p. 19. |
Comments: Published in 1963 by Victor Gollancz Ltd. The novel that (as leCarre's bio puts it) "secured him a wide reputation"; among other triumphs, he won the 1965 Edgar Award for it. Plot twists are too many and unexpected to risk spoiling here; TSWCIFTC is the classic espionage story. Smiley appears only in passing, as the author of the scheme in which the main character is embroiled. |
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The Looking-Glass War | |
| Comments: First published in 1965 by William Heinneman Ltd. A department of self-deluded, aging military spies try to justify their existence in the post-war world; marvelously bleak, biting humour. Again, Smiley appears only in passing, as a liason officer between the struggling agency and the skeptical Circus. |
[Avery:] He called almost in despair, 'Look, how far am I supposed to think? It isn't a question of politics, don't you see? It's a question of fact. Can't you believe? Can't you tell me for once in my life that I'm doing something good?' He went into the bedroom, reasoning. She held a paperback in front of her and pretended to read. 'We all have to, you know, we all have to draw a line round our lives. It's no good asking me the whole time, "Are you sure?" It's like asking whether we should have children, whether we should have married. There's just no point.'
'Poor John,' she observed, putting down the book and analysing him. 'Loyalty without faith. It's very hard for you.' -- from The Looking-Glass War, pp. 59-60. |
| Links: According to the IMDb, TLGW was made into a 1970 film directed by Frank Pierson and starring Christopher Jones (Leiser). This is another one I haven't seen; ratings are mediocre. Anthony Hopkins apparently had a bit part in this flick. | |
A Small Town in Germany | |
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[de Lisle:] 'Power without rule, that's the cry. The right to know better, the right not to be responsible. It's the end, you see, not the beginning,' he said, with a conviction quite disproportionate to his lethargy. 'Both we and the Germans have been through democracy and no one's given us credit for it. Like shaving. No one thanks you for shaving, no one thanks you for democracy. Now we've come out the other side. Democracy was only possible under a class system, that's why: it was an indulgence granted by the privileged. We haven't time for it any more: a flash of light between feudalism and automation, and now it's gone. What's left? The voters are cut off from parliament, parliament is cut off from the Government and the Government is cut off from everyone. Government by silence, that's the slogan. Government by alienation.'
-- from A Small Town in Germany, p. 128. |
Comments: First published in 1968 by William Heinemann Ltd. One of the best, I think, despite the fact that Smiley makes no appearance; set in a fragmenting Europe 12 years in the future. The plot is completely engrossing; the atmosphere as grim as always. |
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The Naive and Sentimental Lover | |
| Comments: First published in 1971 by Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. Set wholly outside the world of espionage: the story of a repressed business executive and his encounter with bohemia. Like A Murder of Quality, this novel is closely focused on class and sexual politics in Britain; I was totally unable to appreciate it. However, I see that the Times calls it splendid and original, so perhaps if you approach it with the right mindset you will have better luck than I did. |
[Mrs. Cassidy:] 'The Chinese have launched their own satellite.'
'Oh my Lord,' said Cassidy. The political world meant nothing to either of them, Cassidy was convinced of it. Like a dead language it provided the opportunity for studying at one remove the meaning of their own. If she talked America she was objecting to his money and Cassidy would reply in kind with a reference to the falling value of the pound; if she talked world poverty she was harping upon their early days when a slender budget had forced upon them an attitude of selfless abstinence. If she talked Russia, a country for which she professed the profoundest admiration, he knew that she longed for the plainer, passionate laws of a more vigorous sex-life, for a never-never land in which his own sophistries could once more be subjugated to urges he no longer felt for her. It was only recently however that she had entered the field of Defence. Uncertain of her meaning he selected a jovial tone. -- from The Naive and Sentimental Lover, p. 122-3. |
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | |
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Alone, Smiley stood at the further end of the paddock, under the dripping trees, trying to make sense of his emotions while he reached for breath. Like an old illness, his anger had taken him by surprise. Ever since his retirement he had been denying its existence, steering clear of anything that could touch it off: newspapers, former colleagues, gossip of the Martindale sort. After a lifetime of living by his wits and his considerable memory, he had given himself full-time to the profession of forgetting. He had forced himself to pursue scholarly interests which had served him well enough as a distraction while he was at the Circus, but now that he was unemployed were nothing, absolutely nothing. He could have shouted: Nothing!
'Burn the lot,' Ann had suggested helpfully, referring to his books. 'Set fire to the house. But don't rot.' If by rot, she meant conform, she was right to read that as his aim. He had tried, really tried.... And now, at the very moment when he was near enough beginning to believe his own dogma, a feat made no easier by Ann's infatuation for an out-of-work actor, what happens but that the assembled ghosts of his past ... barge into his cell and cheerfully inform him, as they drag him back to this same garden, that everything which he had been calling vanity is truth? -- from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, pp. 79-80. | Comments: First published in 1974 by Hodder and Stoughton. His masterpiece, I think -- a gripping plot, with a cast of supremely-believable characters. Opens with Smiley having been booted out of the service, while a Soviet mole wreaks havoc with the Circus secrets. |
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The Honourable Schoolboy | |
| Comments: First published in 1977 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd; the second book in the Karla trilogy. Opens with Smiley running a devastated Circus, in the wake of the events described in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Tawdry in-house politics, intrigue and murder in Hong Kong, the horrors of South-East Asia in the wake of the Vietnam War, and the usual Smiley angst; all are combined to great effect. |
One day, thought Guillam, as he continued listening, one of two things will happen to George. He'll cease to care, or the paradox will kill him. If he ceases to care, he'll be half the operator he is. If he doesn't, that little chest will blow up from the struggle of trying to find the explanation for what we do. Smiley himself, in a disastrous off-the-record chat to senior officers, had put the names to his dilemma, and Guillam, with some embarassment, recalled them to this day. To be inhuman in defence of our humanity, he had said, harsh in the defence of compassion. To be single-minded in defence of our disparity. They had filed out in a veritable ferment of protest. Why didn't George just do the job and shut up instead of taking his faith out and polishing it in public till the flaws showed? Connie had even murmured a Russian aphorism in Guillam's ear which she insisted on attributing to Karla.
'They'll be no war, will there, Peter darling?' she had said, reassuringly, squeezing his hand as he led her along the corridor. 'But in the struggle for peace not a single stone will be left standing, bless the old fox. I'll bet they didn't thank him for that one in the Collegium either.' -- from The Honourable Schoolboy, pp. 522-3. |
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Smiley's People | |
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All his professional life, it seemed to Smiley, he had listened to similar verbal antics signalling supposedly great changes in Whitehall doctrine; signalling restraint, self-denial, always another reason for doing nothing. He had watched Whitehall's skirts go up, and come down again, her belts being tightened, loosened, tightened. He had been the witness, or victim -- or even reluctant prophet -- of such spurious cults as lateralism, parallelism, separatism, operational devolution, and now, if he remembered Lacon's most recent meanderings correctly, of integration. Each new fashion had been hailed as a panacea: 'Now we shall vanquish, now the machine will work!' Each had gone out with a whimper, leaving behind it the familiar English muddle, of which, more and more, in retrospect, he saw himself as a lifelong moderator. He had forborne, hoping others would forbear, and they had not. He had toiled in back rooms while shallower men held the stage. They held it still. Even five years ago he would never have admitted to such sentiments. But today, peering calmly into his own heart, Smiley knew that he was unled, and perhaps unleadable; that the only restraints upon him were those of his own reason, and his own humanity. As with his marriage, so with his sense of public service. I invested my life in institutions -- he thought without rancour -- and all I am left with is myself.
And with Karla, he thought; with my black Grail. -- from Smiley's People, pp. 161-2. |
Comments: First published in 1980, by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd; the final installment of the Karla trilogy. For me, the most satisfying of LeCarré's books, in large part because of Smiley's revolt against Circus inadequacy. The pacing and characterisations are as gripping as ever. Opens with Smiley, having been booted once again out of the Service, called back to quietly 'settle' an agent's murder. |
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The Little Drummer Girl | |
| Comments: First published in 1983 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. Set outside the cold war, around the conflict between Palestine and Israel. One of the best non-Smiley books, I think: fascinating characters, and a suspenseful, horrifying story. Opens with a description of the bombing of an Israeli diplomat's home, in West Germany. |
In the same clinical fashion--strictly for the record, Charlie--Kurtz led her painstakingly through the remaining disparate articles of her uncertain faith. Charlie flailed and rallied and flailed again with the growing desperation of the half-taught; Kurtz, seldom criticising, always courteous, glanced at the file, paused for a word with Litvak, or, for his own oblique purposes, jotted himself a note on the pad before him. In her mind, as she floundered fiercely on, she saw herself in one of those improvised happenings at drama school, working her way into a part that increasingly lacked meaning for her as she advanced. She watched her own gestures and they no longer belonged to her words. She was protesting, therefore she was free. She was shouting, therefore she was protesting. She listened to her voice and it belonged to nobody at all. From the pillow-talk of a forgotten lover she snatched a line of Rousseau, from somewhere else a phrase from Marcuse. She saw Kurtz sit back and, lowering his eyes, nod to himself and put down his pencil, so she supposed that she had finished, or he had. She decided that, given the superiority of her audience and the poverty of her lines, she had managed quite decently after all. Kurtz seemed to think so too. She felt better, and a lot safer. Kurtz too, apparently.
-- from The Little Drummer Girl, p. 158. |
| Links: According to the IMDb, TLDG was made into a 1984 film, directed by George Roy Hill and starring Diane Keaton as Charlie. LeCarre himself makes a cameo appearance. I haven't seen the movie, but there's an extensive review online, by Peter Reiher. | |
A Perfect Spy | |
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[Pym's childhood:] Another time they towed a trailer filled with crates of oranges which Pym refused to eat because he overheard Syd saying they were hot. They sold them to a pub on the road to Birmingham. Once they had a load of dead chickens which Syd said they could only move at night when it was cold enough, so perhaps that was what had gone wrong with the oranges. And there is a clip of film running for ever in my memory. It shows a scraggy moonlit hilltop on the moors, and our two cabs with their lights out winding nervously to the crest. And the dark figures standing waiting for us on the back of their lorry. And the masked lamp as they counted out the money for Mr. Muspole the great accountant while Syd unloaded the trailer. And though Pym watched from a distance because he hated feathers, no night frontier crossing later in his life was every more exciting.
-- From A Perfect Spy, p. 119. |
Comments: First published in 1986 by Hodder and Stoughton; in Canada, by Viking Penguin Books Canada; in the US, by Alfred A. Knopf. An intensely depressing masterpiece of characterisation. This book -- without Smiley, and without too many smiles either -- I found to be an overwhelmingly emotional experience: the story of Magnus Pym, who learns deceit from his charismatic, swindling father and spends the rest of his life betraying a wide variety of friends. |
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The Russia House | |
| Comments: First published in 1989 by Hodder and Stoughton; in Canada, by Viking Penguin Books Canada; in the US, by Alfred A. Knopf. Another favorite of mine; a suspenseful, ironic story. In the light of recent Russian history, even more depressing than he may have intended at the time. |
[Palfrey:] The whole of Whitehall was agreed that no story should ever begin that way again. Indoctrinated ministers were furious about it. They set up a frightfully secret committee of enquiry to find out what went wrong, hear witnesses, name names, spare no blushes, point fingers, close gaps, prevent a recurrence, appoint me chairman and draft a report. What conclusions our committee reached, if any remains the loftiest secret of them all, particularly from those of us who sat on it. For the function of such committees, as we all well knew, is to talk earnestly until the dust has settled. , and then ourselves return to dust. Which, like a disgruntled Cheshire cat, our committee duly did, leaving nothing behind us but our frightfully secret frown, a meaningless interim working paper, and a bunch of secret annexes in the Treasury archives.
-- From The Russia House, p. 40. |
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The Secret Pilgrim | |
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Yet I was content, as I am content to this day whenever I think of Hansen. I had found what I was looking for -- a man like myself, but one who in his search for meaning had discovered a worthwhile object for his life; who had paid every price and not counted it a sacrifice; who was paying it still and would pay it till he died; who cared nothing for compromise, nothing for his pride, nothing for ourselves or the opinion of others; who had reduced his life to the one thing that mattered to him, and was free. The slumbering subversive in me had met his champion. The would-be lover in me had found a scale by which to measure his own trivial preoccupations.
-- From The Secret Pilgrim, p. 257. |
Comments: First published in 1990 by Hodder and Stoughton; in Canada, by Viking Penguin Books Canada; in the US, by Alfred A. Knopf. A collection of short stories from the life of Ned, ex-boss of the Russia House, narrated as they pass through his mind while he listens to Smiley's meditative comments to the year's graduating class of spies. It's an interesting format, & the stories are as usual compelling reading. |
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The Night Manager | |
| Comments: First published in 1993 by Hodder and Stoughton; in Canada, by Viking Penguin Books Canada; in the US, by Alfred A. Knopf. A really alarming, depressing story, in which a British agency's struggle against the arms-for-drugs trade is throughly compromised by corruption in the British government and intelligence services. Opens with the arrival of 'the worst man in the world' at a posh Swiss hotel. |
Alone in an immense and unfamiliar continent, Johnathan was assailed by a different kind of deprivation. His resolve seemed suddenly to drain into the brilliant thinness of the landscape. Roper is an abstraction, so is Jed and so am I. I am dead and this is my afterlife. Trekking along the edge of the uncaring highway, sleeping in drivers' dormitories and barns, scrounging a day's pay for two days' labor, Johnathan prayed to be given back his sense of calling.
"Your best bet is the Chateau Babette," Rooke had said. "It's big and sloppy, and it's run by a harridan who can't keep staff. It's where you'd naturally hole out." "It's the ideal place for you to start looking for your shadow," Burr had said. Shadow meaning identity. Shadow meaning substance, in a world where Johnathan had become a ghost. -- From The Night Manager, p. 137. |
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Our Game | |
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"Done your job, Tim, old boy," he complains in his drawled, echoless voice. "Lived the passion of your time. Who can do more?"
I say, Who indeed. But Merriman has no ear for irony except his own. "It was there, it was evil, you spied the hell out of it, and now it's gone away. I mean we can't say, simply because we won, there was no point in fighting, can we? Much better to say, Hooray, we trounced them, the Commie dog is dead and buried, time to move on to the next party." He manages a little whinny of amusement. "Not Party with a capital P. The small kind." -- From Our Game, p. 23. |
Comments: First published in 1995 by Hodder and Stoughton; in Canada, by Viking Penguin Books Canada; in the US, by Alfred A. Knopf. Suspense, intrigue, a familiar cast of tormented heroes, & a whole new area of ethics to criticise: Western apathy in the face of 1990s-style ethnic cleansing. Opens with our hero (Tim) receiving the news that his joe, Larry, has gone missing. |
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The Tailor of Panama | |
| Comments: First published in 1996 by Hodder and Stoughton; in Canada, by Viking Penguin Books Canada; in the US, by Alfred A. Knopf. From incompetently corrupt in the Smiley era, to riddled with corruption, in The Night Manager and Our Game, we now see the West as wholly venal, exploitative, and violent. Another really depressing LeC thriller: Our Man in Havana re-written as gallows humour. Timely and engrossing, as always. |
[Osnard:] Stuck in the so-called Spanish Cellar ... the young probationer jotted down an acerbic appraisal of his employers' standing in the Whitehall marketplace:
Islam Militant: Occasional flurries, basically underperforming. As a substitute for Red Terror, total flop. Arms for Drugs, PLC: A washout. Service doesn't know whether to play gamekeeper or poacher. -- From The Tailor of Panama, pp 208-209. |
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Single & Single | |
| It is midwinter and Oliver is a litle mad. That much he knows about himself, no more. The origins of his madness, its causes, duration and degree, are not within his grasp, not now. They are out there, but for another time, another couple of brandies.... Something amazing is about to happen to him and he is eager to find out what it will be. He isn't drunk, but technically he isn't sober either. A few vodkas on the flight, a half of red with the rubber chicken, a Rémy or two afterward have done no more in Oliver's eyes than bring him up to speed with the furor already raging inside him. He has only hand luggage and nothing to declare except a reckless ferment of the brain, a firestorm of outrage and exasperation starting so long ago that its origins are impossible to peg, blowing through his head like a hurricane while other members of his internal congregation stand around in timid twos and threes and ask one another what on earth Oliver is going to do to put it out. He is approaching signs of different colors, and, instead of wishing him peace, joy on earth and goodwill among men, they are requiring him to define himself. Is he a stranger in his own country? Answer, yes he is.
-- From Single & Single, p. 93. |
Comments: First published in 1999 by Hodder and Stoughton; in Canada, by Viking Penguin Books Canada; in the US, by Alfred A. Knopf. As a novel, by far my favourite of the last fifteen years, partly because of Aggie, by far LeC's coolest heroine. Decency, love, and betrayal are the familiar themes of this novel, but the tone is less anguished; one has a vision that redemption is possible, for the lead character. LeCarré turns over a new leaf? |
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It is at times like this that I realize how long I have been maintaining this web page. For S&S, in contrast to earlier novels, there appear to be dozens or hundreds of online reviews ... it's no longer a question of putting up the exhaustive list of links! Well, here are are a few reviews that caught my eye. For more links, just search under "lecarré single" on your local portal!
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The Constant Gardener | |
| When I have time, ha ha, I'll be writing this book up like I've done for the others -- I'm a bit behind the times here.
At the Canadian store (Chapters.ca) they had the following publisher's blurb: "Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carre's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and travelling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's husband Justin, a career diplomat and amateur gardener at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey...". |
Comments: (Dec 2001). I read this & loved it; another rabid LeC fan I know says it was his favourite leC book since the Smiley series. Chortle! It's part of a really interesting change in LeC's career, signalled in Single & Single, whereby the relationship of public:private life of the early books is totally reversed. In the Smiley books, which I also love, I would say we have [inevitable betrayal in personal relationships -> search for meaning through public service -> struggle of good & evil reflected in institutions' arbitrary & hollow codifications -> bittersweet "victories" unacknowledged by one's loved ones and coopted by corrupt peers]. In TCG and in S&S we have [inevitable corruption of Western public service -> search for meaning in personal relationships -> fallible but good romantics struggling to resist subordination to nominally "higher" public goods that are really evil & corrupt -> bittersweet victories where one submits totally to interpersonal romance and betrays the (corrupt) higher principles to which one had formally sworn allegiance.] |
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If you are not deterred by my incredible & blatant failure to update, please do contact me and let me know of any LeC news!
In addition, Jim Turner maintains a LeCarré Mailing List, to which you can subscribe by clicking here. I haven't checked it out personally (my e-mail traffic is unmanageable right now) but look forward to joining at a later date.
Additional credit: A tip of the virtual nib to Al Navis of Almark & Co. Booksellers for taking the time to correct me about the relative "firsts" in first edition ... Thanks also to Barry Spinner for his help in identifying dead S&S links. Thanks to Thilo for sending me the link to the Times article in which LeC discusses his career as a spy. Thanks to David Smith for first alerting me to the publication of The Constant Gardener.
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