A Delicate Truth

Perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the 20th century in Britain … He should have won the Booker Prize a long time ago. It’s time he won it and it’s time he accepted it. He’s in the first rank. – Ian McEwan * Telegraph *No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times, from the Second World War to the “War on Terror” * Guardian *One of those writers who will be read a century from now – Robert HarrisWith A Delicate Truth, le Carré has in a sense come home. And it’s a splendid homecoming … Satisfying, subtle and compelling * The Times *The perfectly paced, exquisitely cynical style that is le Carré’s hallmark * Sunday Times *The master of the modern spy novel returns … this is writing of such quality that - as Robert Harris put it - it will be read in one hundred years * Daily Mail *A brilliant climax, with sinister deaths, casual torture, wrecked lives and shameful compromises * Observer *A writer of towering gifts … le Carré is one of the great analysts of the contemporary scene, who has a talent to provoke as well as unsettle * Independent *John le Carré takes us back to his favourite scenarios: Whitehall, the secret services, the gentleman’s clubs, dodgy bankers, corrupt public schoolboys and gruesome American neo-cons … revelling once more in that imaginary world of secrets and lies that is le Carré’s gift to us * Evening Standard *Thrilling, suspenseful … Fans will not be disappointed * Sunday Express *

John le Carre was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carre widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020.