I spy John le Carré secrets in an upcoming biography.
When Adam Sisman was in the process of writing John Le Carre: The Biography back in the 2010s, the author told his biographer, “I know it’s supposed to be warts and all … but so far as I can gather, it’s going to be all warts and no all.”
Former M15 officer and author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Le Carré—whose real name was David Cornwell, much less mysterious—seemingly had the last laugh, publishing an autobiography, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life, the year after Sisman’s book.
But ho! Sisman is back with a followup biography that contains “information that he was ‘obliged to withhold’ from the previous book when Le Carré was ‘very much alive and looking over my shoulder,'” following the death in 2020 of the spy-slash-famed-adulterer. So we can expect much, much more intrigue, potentially about his affairs, going by what Le Carre’s son, who runs the estate told Sisman. The Secret Life of John le Carré will show “how Le Carré conducted his affairs like espionage operations, running women as if they were agents,” said Sisman.
Let us hope, in the stylings of this blurbed copy of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, that it is a truly terrible book.
[via The Guardian]
