Graham Greene, whom le Carré greatly admired, once said that ‘an unhappy childhood is an asset for a writer’, and this young David had in spades. He was only 5 when he and his older brother were abandoned by their mother, to be brought up by their father, a domineering, larger-than-life conman, wife-beater and sexual tyrant, whose overwhelming personality would haunt David for the rest of his life and was the inspiration for his novel A Perfect Spy.
These ‘hugless’ childhood years, as David called them, were ones of stark contrasts. At one moment the family would be living like princes, the next bailiffs were in the house and their father might even be in jail. The boys were taught early on to lie convincingly in order to bail their father out, so the scene was set for the kind of double life that David would later lead when he worked for the secret service, and for the shadowy worlds of violence and betrayal that he created in his novels. It also produced a man who sought out danger, both in doing his meticulous research, and in his multiple affairs with women, a subject Adam explored in a second biography, The Secret Life of John Le Carré, published after le Carré’s death.
Adam speaks fascinatingly about his often tense relationship with this complex, brilliant and seductively charming man whose great Cold War novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, with their brilliant dialogue and scene-setting and their unforgettable central character George Smiley, are felt by many to far transcend the genre of spy fiction.
To finish, there’s the usual round-up of reading recommendations including a personal and passionate account of Putin’s Russia through the eyes of a BBC journalist, Goodbye to Russia by Sarah Rainsford, and A Voyage around the Queen by Craig Brown, an exceptionally researched and hilarious biography of sorts of our late Queen Elizabeth II.
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Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles mentioned on the podcast and listed below. Please get in touch with the Slightly Foxed office for more information. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: minutes; seconds)
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Adam Sisman, John le Carré (1:09)
Adam Sisman, The Secret Life of John le Carré (1:13)
John le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (3:25)
John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (4:04)
E. M. Delafield, Diary of a Provincial Lady (7:45)
Slightly Foxed Issue 84 (8:00)
John le Carré, A Perfect Spy (18:27)
John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl (18:32)
John le Carré, The Constant Gardner (19:16)
John le Carré, Smiley’ s People (37:27)
Sarah Rainsford, Goodbye to Russia (46:47)
Craig Brown, A Voyage around the Queen (44:05)
– Circus Tricks, Adam Sisman on John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Issue 53
Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by Bach
Hosted by Rosie Goldsmith
Produced by Philippa Goodrich
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I took great comfort in having received this Slightly Foxed Podcast newsletter because I was not expecting this delightful news. It is an author that I have never read, yet, I am very familiar with the name le Carré and of the spy genre. . . 007 James Bond is my favorite of all spies, but I would not read a book on James Bond. Still, I would rather watch the films of Bond as we have quite a Bond collection in our repertoire library and have enjoyed watching them again and again.
I am trying to say that I can’t read spy books, yet, I would not mind watching the movies they’ve made out of them. This was enjoyable to listen to; thank you, Slightly Foxed.