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Review: Adam Sisman’s ‘John le Carré: The Biography’

By Michiko Kakutani

• Dec. 14, 2015
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Betrayal, abandonment and the yearning to belong — these are the psychological tent poles of John le Carré’s novels, driving the plots of his spy stories and lofting his best work way over the genre’s walls. As Adam Sisman’s absorbing new biography of Mr. le Carré (or, rather, of David Cornwell, the man behind the pseudonym) makes clear, these emotions were deeply rooted in the novelist’s unhappy childhood. His father, Ronnie, was a flamboyant and shameless con man who racked up debts and marks around the world and served prison time for fraud. His mother, Olive, abandoned the family when David was 5.

Young David survived the “16 hugless years” that followed his mother’s departure by escaping into a world of fantasy and imagination. Storytelling also became a way to charm, to entertain, to hide — a skill that later served him well in his career in British intelligence, and as a writer. “I’m a liar,” Mr. Sisman quotes him saying. “Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist.”

In “John le Carré: The Biography” Mr. Sisman creates an insightful and highly readable portrait of a writer and a man who has often been as elusive and enigmatic as his fictional heroes. Mr. Sisman does a nimble job of tracing correspondences between le Carré’s novels and David Cornwell’s life, while judiciously trying to sift out what he calls “examples of false memory on David’s part.”

“He has reimagined incidents in his past for his fiction,” says Mr. Sisman, who interviewed the author for about 50 hours and had access to his archives, “and what he remembers afterwards tends to be the fictional reimagining rather than what actually occurred.”

The first half of the biography detailing Mr. Cornwell’s youth, his education and his years with British intelligence are never less than compelling for the le Carré fan, and while the second half devolves into a fairly rote recitation of books written and published, even these chapters shed light on Mr. Cornwell’s arduous research and writing process — and his almost obsessive devotion to his vocation.

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John Le Carre: The Biography by Adam Sisman, book review

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Ultimatelty it's about love. In places, this is a very emotional book. John le Carré had an utterly heartbreaking childhood. When he was five, his mother – having endured enough of her husband's cheating both as a crook and a philanderer – left home. According to Adam Sisman, le Carré's emotional scars never healed: "Looking back at his childhood, he has written of the 'sixteen hugless years' that followed". As le Carré wrote in a letter to his brother: "We were frozen children, & will always remain so." Sisman says Le Carré's response "was to try and make everybody else love him."

While acknowledging "warm feelings" for his subject, Sisman also endeavours "to preserve the splinter of ice in [his] heart that every writer needs, according to Graham Greene". The splinter justifiably melts when Sisman recounts the childhood years, but freezes hard when le Carré goes to Oxford following his National Service as an officer in the Intelligence Corps. His service experience led to his being recruited by MI5 to spy on his fellow undergraduates. To do so, le Carré joined the "Socialist Club, which welcomed left-wingers of every hue, from pale pink to dark red". In later life, he expressed no regret for having done so: "Somebody has to clean the drains, and I found that I did do things that, although they were in some way morally repugnant, I felt at the time, and still feel, to have been necessary."

Le Carré's later novels and political views – expressed by joining anti-war demos to protest against Blair's invasion of Iraq – progress from what Robert McCrum describes as "seething" to "incandescent". The most startling revelation came in 2008 when le Carré admitted to Sunday Times journalist Rod Liddle that "while working for MI6 he had considered defecting to the Soviet Union". Le Carré later tried to explain his comment in a letter to The Times. It was a result of "post-prandial Calvados" and reflected "the plight of professional eavesdroppers who identify so closely with the people they are listening to that they start to share their lives". Or is there another explanation? "People who have had very unhappy childhoods", le Carré once wrote, "are pretty good at inventing themselves... I'm a liar. Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as a novelist."

There are a few writers of spy fiction, if any, who have more personal experience in the world of espionage than John le Carré. Following a brief spell as a modern languages master at Eton, le Carré joined MI5 – a service that he did not find impressive: "For a while you wondered whether the fools were really pretending to be fools, as some kind of deception, but alas, the reality was the mediocrity." He then made the upmarket jump to MI6. But few ex-colleagues in either service applauded le Carré's novels. One ranted: "I deplore and hate everything he has done and said against the intelligence services." At a diplomatic dinner in Washington he was confronted by another ex-colleague who shouted: "You bastard! You utter bastard."

This is the best biography of 2015 – a rare achievement that invites rereading.

Edward Wilson's latest novel is 'A Very British Ending' (Arcadia)

Bloomsbury, £25. Order at the discounted price of £22 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop

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John le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman - review

This is the way to do it. Why this admirably balanced, patiently detailed biography of John le Carré is not on the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist when, to take an example entirely at random, Jonathan Bate’s life of Ted Hughes is, beats me.

The biography of John le Carré/David Cornwell has been long contested. Possibly the first literary article I contributed to the Evening Standard, back in 1993, tackled a row about it.

Robert Harris, a serious admirer of le Carré, had been commissioned to write his life, only for a literary journalist, Graham Lord, to circulate a libellous proposal to do the same job, promising revelations of “le Carré’s weird, three-in-a-bed, adulterous, semi-homosexual relationship”, taken up by a publisher, Little, Brown. At the time le Carré said he would “provide no assistance to either writer” although he also told the Standard’s Londoner’s Diary, “I’d rather be written about by a winner than a loser.” Neither book ever appeared.

Now though, Adam Sisman, the author of Boswell’s Presumptuous Task and lives of A J P Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper, has been helped by le Carré who, just this week turned 84, told to write “without restraints”. He was given access to his archives and introductions to the people he has known and granted many hours of interviews with him.

Le Carré has read the typescript and they have not fallen out. “There have been some tense moments during the last four years, but there have also been a lot of laughs,” says Sisman in his introduction.

“‘I know it’s supposed to be warts and all,’ John said to me at one point, ‘but so far as I can gather it’s going to be all warts and no all’.”

Happily, that’s not the case. To be sure, Sisman sets straight le Carré’s false memories, the many re-shapings into story, but it’s without any animus. “He has reimagined incidents in his past for his fiction, and what he remembers tends to be the fictional reimagining rather than what actually occurred,” Sisman says coolly, avoiding any implication of bad faith. He makes quite clear how toughly le Carré has edited and ended his friendships throughout his life and how ruthlessly he has chopped and changed agents and publishers in pursuit of better promotion and higher payment, but there’s no criticism.

Even his admission that he informed on his Left-wing friends at university doesn’t bring blame. Nor his virulent hostility to America.

Sisman’s admiration for the writer is constant. “I confess I stand among le Carré’s admirers,” he says. He also believes that le Carré’s enormous success has prejudiced some critics against him because of literary snobbery against genre fiction.

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Towards the end, this 652-page book does trail off a little into an account of one book after another: the deals, the sales, the reviews. But then it has been clear for some time now that the true sources of le Carré’s fiction lie not in his years as a spy, for both MI5 and MI6, one part of his life he still declines to discuss in detail, nor in the Cold War itself, but much earlier in his life, in his extraordinary upbringing at the hands of the lifelong conman, Ronnie Cornwell, who was his father.

Ronnie ebulliently conned everybody all his life, including his family, undeterred by multiple bankruptcies and prison sentences, always living far beyond his means, never paying his bills. In 1934 he was first imprisoned for six months for fraud, although neither of his young sons, Tony and David, were told what had happened. In 1936, he was first made bankrupt.

He was sexually licentious too, groping his children and compelling his wife Olive to share their bed with her best friend. When David was five she fled the house without warning and he didn’t see his mother again until he was an adult. It was a desertion he never recovered from. “We were frozen children, & will always remain so,” David wrote to his brother a lifetime later. “Women were people who disappeared without explanation, not to be relied upon,” says Sisman. They are always romanticised and unreal in le Carré’s fiction as, it seems, his first wife Ann often told him.

Sisman deals with David’s “compulsive search for love” tactfully. Although he explains fully enough the affair with Susan, the wife of his novelist friend James Kennaway, so luridly mooted by Graham Lord, he says no more than that as his first marriage broke up, “David embarked on a period of six months’ madness, when he slept with any woman who would have him”.

His second wife, Jane, “recognised from early on in their life together that she would have to share him with other women”, he says, smoothly, adding “David’s infidelities have created a duality and a tension that became a necessary drug for his writing.”

In 2001 le Carré wrote to one of his oldest friends from Oxford, the one-time rector of Lincoln College, Vivian Green, one of the models for George Smiley: “When I am writing properly I still feel 23. When I’m not, I can hardly sleep for despair: such an awful life in so many ways, and looks so terribly impressive from the outside. But the inside has been such a ferment of buried anger and lovelessness from childhood that it was sometimes almost uncontainable.”

Sisman does full justice to this rawness at the heart of le Carré, while at the same time vividly relating Ronnie Cornwell’s astounding exploits: defrauding everybody — pretending to start an airline or build a town in Canada, to representing rival football pools companies. To the end he exploited his famous son — having to be rescued by him from bankruptcy and prison when not actually blackmailing or impersonating him (even sleeping with women that way). It’s practically a le Carré novel — but then you could also say it is all of le Carré’s novels.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, john le carre: the biography.

• About the Book

The definitive biography of the internationally adored author of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY and A PERFECT SPY --- arguably one of the most important and influential writers of the post-World War II period --- by the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biographer Adam Sisman.

In this definitive biography --- blessed by John le Carré himself --- Adam Sisman reveals the man behind the bestselling persona. In JOHN LE CARRE, Sisman shines a spotlight on David Cornwell, an expert at hiding in plain sight --- “born to lying,” he wrote in 2002, “bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist.”

Of course, the pseudonym “John le Carré” has helped to keep the public at a distance. Sisman probes Cornwell’s unusual upbringing, abandoned by his mother at the age of only five and raised by his con man father (when not in prison), and explores his background in British intelligence, as well as his struggle to become a writer, and his personal life. Sisman has benefited from unfettered access to le Carré’s private archive, talked to the most important people in his life, and interviewed the man himself at length.

Who is John le Carré? Intriguing, thorough and packed with entertaining detail, this biography will be a treat for the legions of le Carré fans.

John le Carre: The Biography by Adam Sisman

• Publication Date: November 1, 2016
• Genres: Biography , Nonfiction
• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• ISBN-10: 0062106287
• ISBN-13: 9780062106285

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

John le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman review – a man who’s become his own best fiction

Adam Sisman’s life of the spy novelist is a fascinating truce between candour and guile

I n literature, posterity is the name of the game. John le Carré (aka David Cornwell), who knows this only too well, has been flirting with the idea of his biography since 1989, with many second and third thoughts. Quite a few Le Carré watchers believed that his complicated alter ego would never surrender to the biographer’s torments. Surely, it was said, Britain’s greatest living storyteller is so addicted to mysteries and fabrications that he must always be at odds with the demands of any good Boswell. In the end, the writer’s approaching rendezvous with oblivion tipped the balance, and he struck a deal with Adam Sisman.

The upshot is a fascinating truce between candour and guile. Sisman, justly acclaimed for writing about the dead (AJP Taylor; Hugh Trevor- Roper), must have known what he was risking, but possibly underestimated the fathomless complexity of his subject. Besides, who could capture Le Carré? An addictive mixture of Hamlet and King Lear, with a dash of Mercutio, he has become his own best fiction.

Le Carré is a romantic “lost boy” whose appetite for telling his own story can only be satisfied by enthralling reinvention. His own website even boasts a Prospero-like indifference to the truth: “Nothing that I write is authentic. It is the stuff of dreams, not reality. Artists, in my experience, have very little centre. They fake. They are not the real thing.”

From the outset, Sisman has had to negotiate with a subject whose first instinct is to seduce those who come close to him within a wilderness of mirrors, in which vanity reflects insecurity reflects pride. On this analysis, Le Carré is like the Russian doll that introduced the TV version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy : an enchanting hybrid of sphinx and tease.

Sisman’s Cornwell is a man who has projected himself as a writer of genius while fearing that he’s his silver-tongued, small-town conman of a father’s son. Other dualities abound. Le Carré has dined with presidents and prime ministers, but Cornwell prefers a private life at the edge of society. Le Carré shuns the literary world (during an interview in 2000 he told me: “I feel completely out of step with the English literary scene”), while Cornwell obsesses about his reputation, policing the smallest detail of his life and work.

In this pre-emptive strike against posterity, pride has finally trumped mystification. Somehow, after a last-minute delay for some inevitable second thoughts, what its publisher calls “the biography” has finally emerged, bearing the scorch marks of Cornwell’s fiery self-protectiveness. Long before Sisman proposed himself for mission impossible, at least one would-be biographer (a Sunday Express journalist) had been chased off with writs, while a second, the writer Robert Harris, was first encouraged, then disdained, then monstered.

Cornwell obviously retains a deep ambivalence towards this latest version of himself. Last week, he announced that he had just sold a “memoir”, The Pigeon Tunnel , to Penguin Random House , which is hardly the action of a man joyously saluting the imminent publication of a massive, long-awaited life story.

On his side, Sisman has also acquired some reservations about Cornwell, whom he awkwardly identifies as “David”. In a rather queasy introduction, he makes it clear that he’s had a testing time, and more or less concedes that he has occasionally been leaned on by his subject. Defiantly, he insists on hoping “to publish a revised and updated version”, presumably when Cornwell can no longer interfere.

With these caveats, however, this book fulfils almost every expectation. Sisman has immersed himself in an extraordinary life story and reported it with exemplary dedication, following Le Carré’s footsteps and, like a literary Jeeves, quietly correcting his master’s narrative with here a discreet cough, there a raised eyebrow, anon a sharp intake of breath. I counted about 10 discreet formulas for Le Carré’s lies, from “false memory” to “fictional recreation” to “entertaining mensonge”.

“David”, I suspect, will not relish what Sisman has done to “Le Carré”, which is to strip away a lot of the magic. At the same time, the biographer’s truths, painstakingly quarried from an airy mountain of fabrication, have their own engrossing authenticity. Beyond the sensational headlines of newspaper serialisation – notably a 60s menage a trois with the novelist James Kennaway and his wife Susan – Sisman has also re-examined crucial aspects of Cornwell’s life with cold precision.

Le Carré has already fictionalised Ronnie Cornwell in A Perfect Spy , but the MI5 man who asked: “Forgiven your father yet?” was on the money. Not until Ronnie’s death is the son released from his old man’s intolerable interventions. Described by Cornwell, referencing PG Wodehouse, one of his favourite writers, as a “Ukridge” character, Cornwell senior made and lost several fortunes and was twice imprisoned for fraud.

To this faded family portrait, Sisman adds some splashes of colour, but also darkens it. Ronnie emerges as more sinister: a wife beater, a sexual tyrant and, according to one crooked associate, “very, very bent”. About Cornwell’s mother, Olive, who fled the family home when her son was five years old, leaving a lifelong antagonism towards the opposite sex, Sisman has less to say, which is disappointing. Perhaps the biggest question in Cornwell’s life – was he more wounded by his father’s deceitfulness or his mother’s desertion? – remains unresolved. Nevertheless, being untruthful became a habit of being. For this, Le Carré’s own explanation is as good as any. “People who have had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves.”

His best invention was The Spy Who Came in From the Cold , a zeitgeist book whose inspiration Cornwell attributes to the breakdown of his marriage. At this point in 1962, Sisman establishes that Cornwell’s “spying” consisted of informing on his Oxford contemporaries to MI5, plus a couple of years at a desk in Mayfair, and a tour of duty with MI6 in Bonn. Once the Berlin Wall went up, and Europe became divided, this was more than enough for Le Carré to do what he has called “a sort of Tolkien job” on his experience.

Sisman gives chapter and verse for a diminished portrait of Le Carré, the cold war spook, but Cornwell was always more interested in his predicament as an Englishman in the aftermath of empire. This was the subject of the great sequence of fiction by which he will be judged in the long term: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , The Honourable Schoolboy , Smiley’s People and A Perfect Spy , described by Philip Roth as “the best English novel since the war”.

Here, the old argument about Le Carré’s achievement breaks out afresh. To Roth, Ian McEwan and many others, he is one of the greats. To Anthony Burgess, and Clive James, among the naysayers, he is a self-inflated thriller writer. Tactful but not ecstatic, Sisman seems to side with Le Carre’s distinguished fans, but his biography reports one inescapable verdict: that Le Carré has spent his career mythologising himself and his work. Rarely has there been a more passionate marriage between life and art.

John le Carré: The Biography is published by Bloomsbury (£25). Click here to buy it for £17.50

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Book Review: John Le Carre- The Biography by Adam Sisman

John Le Carre – real name David Cornwall – has for decades enjoyed a  status rare among writers: the acknowledged master of a genre whose work is also considered real literature.

Hardback by Bloomsbury, £35 (ebook £11.88)

Yet, as the years have  passed, and despite massive global success and countless film and TV  adaptations – we seem to know less and less about him.

This absorbing  new doorstopper from Sisman – acclaimed biographer of AJP Taylor, Boswell and Hugh Trevor-Roper, a lifelong enemy of Cornwall’s – promises to change all that, with an in-depth study informed by hundreds of hours’ access to the man himself.

Much of the first half of the book recounts the exploits of Cornwall’s father Ronnie, an incorrigible fraudster and womaniser, and will be familiar to readers of A Perfect Spy. Cornwall’s mother fled when Cornwall was just five, leaving him to ’16 hugless years’ with Ronnie.

These twin betrayals, together with lonely years of bullying in boarding school, leave deep marks on the adult Cornwall. The clandestine duplicity of service in MI5 and later MI6 suits his emotionally stunted nature, though Sisman has to glean what he can of these years from other sources. Le Carre admits he was a spy nowadays, but remains reticent as to his actual activities.

After the overnight success of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Cornwall morphs into Le Carre, the full-time writer, and the latter half of the book is a blurry succession of stories researched (Cornwall still travels widely and dangerously to flesh out his plots), novels reviewed, and contracts negotiated.

Though witnesses queue up to testify to Cornwall’s charisma, intelligence, sense of humour and amazing mimicry skills, it is hard to like him on this showing. He claims at one point that he married his first wife on the advice of MI5, and sends his sons to boarding school, despite his own traumatic experiences there. He forms intense, quasi-romantic relationships with a range of characterful males, while his second marriage comes across as a partnership with a literary helpmeet and personal assistant rather than a soulmate.

Though Sisman is at pains to point out that he is his own man – Cornwall gives access but has no right of veto – he comes across at times as the novelist’s apologist, for instance, when discussing Cornwall’s tax affairs or the paucity of well-drawn female characters in his oeuvre. The biographer’s claim of fearless impartiality is not helped by his decision to refer to his subject throughout as ‘David’.

The Le Carre persona has enabled us to project onto this much-loved novelist all the qualities we admire in his writing and characters. Inevitably, perhaps, Cornwall the man can only be diminished in the revealing of his flaws and errors. The mask has slipped, and we are the wiser and sadder for it.

Review: Adam Sisman’s biography of John le Carré tells the story of the greatest spy novelist of all time

This article was published more than 8 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

Author John le Carré is profiled in Adam Sisman’s new biography. Kirsty Wigglesworth/The Associated Press

It wasn't enough, apparently, for Adam Sisman to write a biography of the reigning monarch of espionage fiction. John le Carré, the man responsible for the eye-opening Cold War-era novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and a host of subsequent thoughtful thrillers (including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ; The Perfect Spy ; and The Tailor of Panama ) that imagined the spy world as a bureaucratic nightmare filled with bespectacled, paunchy men with tremendous global responsibility.

Instead, Sisman's new 600-plus-page book arrives touted as "The Biography" of le Carré, at least as far as the subtitle is concerned. The preposition is a bold declaration, a provocative dare and a big risk. But it's also hard-won, as Sisman, previously the biographer of Hugh Trevor-Roper and James Boswell, outclassed other would-be le Carré life chroniclers – including Robert Harris, before he became a bestselling thriller writer in his own right – and won the author's approval. Sisman was granted access to le Carré's apparently voluminous personal archive, tacit permission to ferret out truths the novelist might have preferred stayed unferreted, and a licence to tell the entire life story of the man otherwise known as David Cornwell.

And yet. For all of Sisman's diligence, for all of his dutiful chronicling of the rare literary career that garnered great commercial success and critical acclaim in tandem, his le Carré remains a figure we're told about, not shown . His le Carré, we are told, was born into pilfered privilege, affected by the cruelty of a public-school education and burned with anger thereafter. But we don't see nearly enough of it. His le Carré remains a cipher.

This curious distance between biographer and subject is best summed up by le Carré's statement to Sisman that "I am bound, legally and morally, not to reveal the nature of my work with the SIS." Le Carré's brief career as a spy, with both MI5 and MI6, and over once The Spy Who Came in from the Cold became a bestseller, is fleshed out further in Sisman's biography in spite of, not because of, le Carré's admissions.

That led the biographer on a frustrating quest to corroborate stories through third parties. At times this proves successful, as when Sisman delves into le Carré informing on would-be communists while a student at Oxford, the extent to which (including the friendships ruined) was not made clear before this book. But Sisman's overall frustration emerges in an oblique footnote, when le Carré remarks that a former MI5 chief "must have known pretty well that when I was in MI5 I ran one of its most prolific and successful agents for the better part of two years without mishap," but then, as Sisman notes, he "would not be drawn on who this was."

Absences dot the landscape of this entire biography. Sisman shines when he shifts focus to le Carré's parents, Ronnie and Olive Cornwell, their impulsive love corroded into a hell-made match that saw Olive flee her family when le Carré was 5, his older brother Tony 7. That left the boys with Ronnie, who would spend the remainder of his 69 years on Earth looking for the quickest way to riches and the most spectacular means of failure, taking every mark down in the process. Bad loans, failed mortgages, numerous affairs – one where he pretended to be his son, the famous author, which left le Carré baffled when the woman later claimed she knew him – and outright fraud.

Le Carré would sever ties and renew them over his life but he could never, ever shake his father's shadow. As such, whenever Ronnie appears in Sisman's narrative, like the drunk uncle you wish with utter fervour would stop talking at you in the loudest possible voice, it's a cringe-worthy, emotionally fraught experience for the reader, as it must have been for le Carré and his family. But the spectre Ronnie casts was grist for le Carré's fictional mill, most of all for Magnus Pym's filial ties in The Perfect Spy , and at times for several attempts at memoir, the most successful a short piece published in The New Yorker in the late 1990s.

Sisman tries to tie the effect of Olive's abandonment of her family on le Carré's emotional state, but the relationship seems more correlative than causal. (Men with absent mothers cheat and hold grudges just as men with present mothers do.) Le Carré's youthful marriage to Ann, mother of his first three children, was fraught with disaster, especially when he more or less freaked out at the prospect of fatherhood by involving himself in a love triangle with Susan and James Kennaway as he transformed from intelligence operative to famous writer.

Le Carré admits to Susan in a 1967 letter that he can't commit to her because he is "a painkiller, a concession man, grown-up on negotiating other people's emotions. A great big fat fraud." Ann's side gets her due, too, and her letters to her husband as their marriage fails seethe with jealousy and bitterness, accusing le Carré that she was "no more than a tie from the past he hasn't the heart to cut." But Sisman has little to say about le Carré's second wife Jane, a onetime scout for his long-time publisher Hodder & Stoughton, and as such we know little about her as a person instead of a veritable helpmeet. Presumably she co-operated with Sisman in limited capacity, but it means that what Jane does say to the biographer, notably that "nobody can have all of David" while referring to his propensity for extramarital affairs, packs a harder punch.

The le Carré on view in Sisman's biography is a man in perpetual motion, whether to escape his "black dogs" through constant travel or side affairs, or because his famous-author status afforded him opportunities unavailable to others. This emerges in a sly set piece in 1964 when le Carré gets off a plane in New York, driven to a "packed press conference" at the Plaza Hotel, and "as cameras flashed and microphones were pushed towards his face, [le Carré] realized that he was famous." He's also continually angry at something or someone, sparring with Salman Rushdie by letter for years over The Satanic Verses (neither man emerges unscathed), fighting with publishers and agents over payments due and being properly marketed or complaining in private about reviews he claimed in public not to have read. No wonder le Carré gravitates toward regimented solitude to get any meaningful fiction writing done.

What is missing, despite repeated attempts to denote his daily writing life at his Treffigian estate in Cornwall, is a sense of le Carré's intellectual influence. Aside from what the younger le Carré memorized in public school, Sisman hardly notes what the man read, or even if he did much at all. Part of it, granted, is le Carré's general aversion to the London literary scene, but that doesn't seem enough explanation for this particular biographical absence.

Sisman hedges his bets on writing the definitive le Carré take with the introductory caveat that he plans a revised and updated edition "in the fullness of time." So it's no surprise Sisman ended up "a whaler in [the] skiff, being towed by a leviathan." Last month le Carré, now 84, announced he would publish his memoirs, titled The Pigeon Tunnel , next September. It may fill in the gaps he withheld from Sisman. It may be a series of entertaining anecdotes, along the lines of his thriller-peer Frederick Forsyth, whose own unabashedly enjoyable, if politically incorrect, memoir was just published. And it may show that a man well-versed in lying for a living cannot possibly be the subject of an authoritative biography, no matter how dutiful the attempt.

Sarah Weinman is the editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s .

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Book review: John Le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman

John Le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman | Bloomsbury, £25

Le Carré has developed a reputation for being cantankerous: over the years he has switched publishers and agents and thwarted the few who have attempted to write his biography, so it comes as something of a surprise that Adam Sisman has received the novelist’s blessing to take on the task, and was granted hours of interviews and access to more than 500 boxes of papers and manuscripts.

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Cornwell had a traumatic childhood. Appalled by her husband Ronnie’s philandering, fraudulent lifestyle and terms of imprisonment, Olive Cornwell abandoned the family, leaving her five-year-old son David and his older brother Tony to life with a variety of guardians and step-parents and attending a series of private schools, for which Ronnie usually failed to pay the fees.

Sisman details Cornwell’s early writing, his university, National Service and teaching careers, as well his burgeoning interest in German language and culture at an unfashionable, not to say dangerous, time, and so to his introduction to the British intelligence services.

The core of the book is an exploration of the 23 Le Carré novels. There is, of course, celebration of Cornwell’s success with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and discussion of the real-life models for Le Carré’s most famous character, George Smiley, but what makes this a truly great biography is the treatment of the theme within, spying.

To his craft as a biographer, Sisman adds the tradecraft of the spy. He waits and watches, gathering intelligence on his subject for us. We are individual members of his “Joint Intelligence Committee” as much as we are his readers.

He refers to John Le Carré as David Cornwell virtually throughout. Each is a mask for the other. A “double agent” then, but who is he, really? As in Le Carré’s novels, the reader has to take in every nuance on every page to get to the truth.

This is not a spoiler, but the end is surprising. Perhaps it is the key to the man, agreeing to a biography in what is now his 85th year. “I’ve got 13 grandchildren and fantastic wives for my sons,” he says. “I was the bridge they had to cross to get from my father to life.”

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Robin diangelo plagiarized minority scholars, complaint alleges, smugged by reality, biden-harris admin warns kindergartners climate change will leave entire us cities underwater, biden and harris 'never once reached out' to relatives of soldiers killed in bungled afghanistan withdrawal, families say, looking for le carré, review: john le carré, the biography by adam sisman.

For sheer entertainment, there is no better postwar English novelist than John le Carré. When Adam Sisman tells us in his intriguing biography that the brilliant Karla trilogy of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,   The Honorable Schoolboy,  and Smiley’s People was planned as a loose, extended novel cycle after the manner of Balzac’s Comédie humaine , the tease is almost too mean, especially for those of us who think that le Carré’s work has suffered since the end of the Cold War and would like nothing better than to know what poor shabby Toby Esterhase did with himself in the "Cool Britannia" ’90s.

Unlike so many other specimens of the spy genre, le Carré’s best novels continue to delight upon rereading not because we are able to suspend our knowledge of their plots but because, like the Matryoshka dolls that appear in the credits of the old BBC miniseries adaptation of Tinker, Tailor , they can be taken apart and put back together over and over again with a kind of inexplicable childish wonder as we hope for a glimpse of something hidden amid the curiously painted faces.

The nesting doll is an appropriate symbol for le Carré’s life as well as his work. Like A.J.A. Symans’s classic The Quest for Corvo or Evelyn Barish’s recent life of Paul de Man, this is biography as detective work, or, if you like, as espionage. Sisman, previously the author of excellent biographies of A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper, questions his subject’s truthfulness for the first time on page four, when he tells us that le Carré, whose real name is David Cornwell, was either being credulous toward his mother’s memory or simply inventing when he gave an account of his parents’ first meeting in an essay in the New Yorker in 2002. Though he secured le Carré’s cooperation for the book, including 50 hours of interviews and access to the author’s private papers, there are many things that at the end of 600 pages he still does not know. Even something as fundamental as the origin of his subject’s pen name, French for "the square," is shrouded in mystery.

Le Carré, referred to throughout as "David," was born in 1931 to "Ronnie" and Olive Cornwell. The elder Cornwell is one of the most colorful and least sympathetic fathers in literary history. He dominates the first fifth or so of the book. The son of a Non-Conformist businessman and local Liberal politician in Dorset, Ronnie was a confidence trickster who lost thousands of pounds of other people’s money in various investment schemes and was twice imprisoned. He fondly bragged that he had never read a book. He molested his children, including the young le Carré, and told them that he would be judged by God on the basis of how he treated them.

After attending Sherbourne, where le Carré did his best to brush off embarrassing questions—where did the money come from?—about his family, most of which he could not then have answered, the young le Carré continued his education in Berne. Following military service abroad, he continued to Oxford, where he studied modern languages and had his first stint in intelligence work reporting on undergraduate left-wing activity for MI5. Upon earning his degree in 1956, he became a schoolmaster, like Jim Prideaux in Tinker Tailor . Two years later, however, he was working as a spook again, doing, it appears, mostly low-level dirty work—phone tapping, breaking and entering, interrogations, and the like. In 1960, he was at the British Embassy in Bonn at the behest of MI6. By the time he left the service in 1964, he had already published three novels, the third of which, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , was an immediate, albeit surprising bestseller. It was also a great critical success.

It is instructive to compare this novel’s spare, dialogue-driven opening pages, with their effortlessly established atmosphere of tension and indeterminacy—is it dust or fog or cigarette smoke rising from beneath the lamps?—with those of another representative thriller of the period. Here is how Ian Fleming begins Moonraker , with gunshots and brand names and dialogue that would be embarrassing in a TV Western:

The two thirty-eights roared simultaneously. The walls of the underground room took the crash of sound and batted it to and fro between them until there was silence. James Bond watched the smoke being sucked from each of the room towards the central Ventaxia fan. The memory in his right hand of how he had drawn and fired with one sweep from the left made him confident. He broke the chamber sideways out of the Colt Detective Special and waited, his gun pointing at the floor, while the Instructor walked the twenty yards towards him through the half-light of the gallery. Bond saw that the Instructor was grinning. "I don’t believe it," he said. "I got you that time."

This biography is investigative, not interpretive or analytical. Minus a few lines in the introduction, Sisman is uninterested in shoring up his subject’s reputation. He does not pass judgment on le Carre’s numerous love affairs, most of them, even the ones recounted without naming the other party, very cold-blooded sounding indeed. Nor does he tell us what he thinks about le Carré’s increasingly conspiratorial and vapid politics, which have nothing of the charm of his characters’ gin-soaked Tory nihilism.

It is hard not to admire le Carré’s professed willingness to let Sisman go about his work, though it is clear that he has not been above all interference. It may be many decades before all our questions about his intelligence work—much of which, he claims, was utterly inconsequential—are answered. In his introduction, Sisman tells us that he is preparing "a revised and updated version" of the biography to be published after his subject’s death. I look forward to seeing the second edition, and not only because I am curious about what has been held back. There are some questionable editorial decisions here. Why do Sisman’s editors think that anyone interested in reading 600-plus pages about le Carré would need to be reminded who Rudyard Kipling ("the great imperial poet") was? Why would the same reader not be thrown off on page one when Gladstone is referred to simply as "the Grand Old Man … of blessed memory"?

Still, this book is a substantial achievement. It confirms Sisman’s reputation as one of the best literary biographers now working in English.

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THE SECRET LIFE OF JOHN LE CARRÉ

by Adam Sisman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 24, 2023

A one-of-a-kind revisiting of a wondrously productive life lived at the expense of two wives and many lovers.

A “supplement” to Sisman’s 2015 biography that focuses on material his subject did not want to see published during his lifetime.

David Cornwell (1931-2020), who took the pen name John le Carré for reasons that are still unknown, was conscientious, hardworking, literate, inventive, witty, and capable of great generosity, especially to the women he pursued while married to one of his two legal spouses. Aware but unapologetic about his own failings, he blamed them on a father who had misbehaved shamelessly and a mother who abandoned the family when he was a child, leaving him, as Sisman observes, “with a lifelong mistrust of women” who had even less reason to trust him. Arguing that Cornwell’s serial womanizing was not a distraction from his copious output but an active driver of it, Sisman demonstrates how betrayal was the leitmotif of both the novelist’s life and his art and that however completely he depended on his wives, he depended on a new woman to serve as his inspiration for each book. Anyone familiar with le Carré’s oeuvre will know that that’s an awful lot of women. Of the three affairs Sisman traces in the greatest detail, only one of them—Cornwell’s extended relationship with researcher Sue Dawson—persuasively bears out his first argument, as analogies between Cornwell’s paranoid behavior and le Carré’s obsession with spycraft multiply throughout its course. Sisman makes a more convincing case for his second argument, tracing the author’s professional decline to his inability to attract muses for the increasingly formulaic novels he continued to write. Sisman’s return to the “secret annexe” of material Cornwell’s son urged him to leave out of his earlier biography is given even greater interest by his unusual candor in considering the ethical implications of his tell-all coda for Cornwell, his many lovers, and biographical projects generally.

Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023

ISBN: 9780063341043

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 11, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton

LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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John Le Carre: The Biography Paperback – Illustrated, 1 Nov. 2016

"An insightful and highly readable portrait of a writer and a man who has often been as elusive and enigmatic as his fictional heroes." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

The definitive biography of the internationally adored author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and A Perfect Spy --arguably one of the most important and influential writers of the post-World War II period--by the award-winning biographer Adam Sisman.

In this definitive biography--blessed by John le Carré himself--Adam Sisman reveals the man behind the bestselling persona. In John le Carré , Sisman shines a spotlight on David Cornwell, an expert at hiding in plain sight--"born to lying," he wrote in 2002, "bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist."

Of course, the pseudonym "John le Carré" has helped to keep the public at a distance. Sisman probes Cornwell's unusual upbringing, abandoned by his mother at the age of only five and raised by his con man father (when not in prison), and explores his background in British intelligence, as well as his struggle to become a writer, and his personal life. Sisman has benefited from unfettered access to le Carré's private archive, talked to the most important people in his life, and interviewed the man himself at length.

Who is John le Carré? Intriguing, thorough, and packed with entertaining detail, this biography will be a treat for the legions of le Carré fans.

• Print length 720 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date 1 Nov. 2016
• Dimensions 15.24 x 3.66 x 22.86 cm
• ISBN-10 0062106287
• ISBN-13 978-0062106285
• See all details

Product description

"What could have been a cloying hagiography or a lurid warts-and-all exposé is instead a balanced, focused and compelling study of a man of depth and individuality... This biography expertly shows how distance, distrust and even disillusionment have informed Mr le Carré and influenced his bestselling fiction." -- The Economist

"In John le Carré The Biography, Mr. Sisman creates an insightful and highly readable portrait of a writer and a man who has often been as elusive and enigmatic as his fictional heroes." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Loose threads are what fascinate most about Adam Sisman's biography of David Cornwell, who at 84 still writes and publishes knotty, brainy thrillers under the pseudonym John le Carré...Best of all, Sisman provides aficionados of le Carré's fiction with canny assessments of, and inside information on all his written work." -- USA Today

"The major themes of Adam Sisman's meticulously researched John le Carré The Biography are twofold: the desperate search for love and artful self-invention through spying and writing fiction . . . . [the book] is unfailingly engrossing." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"A candid and enthralling account of heartache, betrayal and adventure, and how hard facts helped create great fiction." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Admiring without being toadying, detailed without being overstuffed, highly readable and, above all, knowledgeable about the work. . . . Sisman is the kind of thorough, serious writer who inspires trust...and what we take away is a new appreciation of le Carré's full range." -- Joseph Kanon for The New York Times Book Review

"It is a disappointment to reach the end of John le Carré which is admirably scholarly." -- Wall Street Journal

"Sisman has written an admirable biography. It's at its best when recounting...David's struggles to escape from his father's malign influence and find purpose in life, which he did when the worldwide success of his third novel...liberated him to write full time." -- The Financial Times

"John le Carré shows us that the novelist's real life is just as fascinating as those le Carré depicts in his novels...There's a con-artist, larger-than-life father; a destructive, blockbuster affair with a good friend's wife; dust-ups with publishers; and tetchy relationships with various movie stars." -- The Oregonian (Portland)

"A fascinating [and] superb biography, bristling with fresh insights." -- BBC.com

"A talented biographer brings the great spy novelist in from the cold." -- Washington Independent Review of Books

"The definitive [authorized!] biography of the internationally adored author of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"-arguably one of the most important and influential writers of the post-World War II period-by the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biographer Adam Sisman." -- My Edmonds News (Seattle, WA)

From the Back Cover

Back in 1963, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold made its pseudonymous author, John le Carré, a worldwide publishing sensation. Since then, le Carré has produced another twenty-one bestselling novels. A master at weaving fiction with fact, le Carré creates complex protagonists who expose tantalizing glimpses into the author's own character. But appearances are deceptive. The real truth is that David Cornwell, the man behind the pseudonym and one of the world's most celebrated writers, has remained an enigma for more than half a century.

In this authoritative biography short-listed for the 2016 Pen Award, Adam Sisman explores how the central themes of Cornwell's life defined his fiction. From his lonely, "hugless" childhood to his early recruitment by British intelligence and the evolution of his spycraft, to his fraught roles as husband and family man, Cornwell's personal history encompasses the basic questions at the heart of his work: What does espionage mean in human terms? To what extent is betrayal acceptable in the name of love? How does a person manage the endless need for forgiveness, especially from oneself?

Written with exclusive access to David Cornwell, his private archive, and his family, friends, enemies, ex-intelligence colleagues, and ex-lovers--and featuring a wealth of previously unseen photographic material--Sisman's biography at last brings in from the cold a man whose life has been as complex, confounding, and filled with treachery as any of his novels.

About the Author

Adam Sisman is the author of Boswell's Presumptuous Task , winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the biographer of John le Carré, A. J. P. Taylor, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. Among his other works are two volumes of letters by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an honorary fellow of the Universy of St. Andrews.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Paperbacks; Illustrated edition (1 Nov. 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 720 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062106287
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062106285
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 3.66 x 22.86 cm
• 20,360 in Biographies on Novelist & Playwrights
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About the author

Adam sisman.

Adam Sisman is a writer specialising in biography, living in Bristol, England. His second book, Boswell's Presumptuous Task, won a National Books Critics Circle award. "Mr. Sisman has an ideal biographical style: inquisitive and open, serious yet not severe," Dwight Garner wrote of Sisman's life of Hugh Trevor-Roper in the New York Times: "I’d read him on anyone.”

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"...Socially popular, very intelligent and yet distant from his wife and children. Particularly as his novels began to receive acclaim...." Read more

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"...In short, the book is thorough , but depressing...." Read more

"This is a very well researched book , and the writer clearly had much access to the subject, his family, his friends and acquaintances and all their..." Read more

Customers find the writing style interesting and the details interesting to read about.

"This is well written biography and not at all spoilt by The Pigeon Tunnel, le Carré's own reminisces, published shortly after, which are a very..." Read more

"...The writing made the life story interesting but did not encourage me to seek to read any more of Le Carre's books." Read more

"...Why, I hesitate to guess.If you can live with the poor structure and the occasional snippiness, you will surely give this offering five..." Read more

"...about Cornwell's early life is known, but the detail was interesting to read about ...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the narrative. Some find it enlightening and densely written, while others find it repetitive, boring, and frustrating. They also mention that the story is unreliable in places and seems only partly planned.

"...It's not only about the man, it's also a fascinating social history of a changing world, a reference point for the background to many of his books..." Read more

"...It’s an unreliable story in places , because he couldn’t talk in detail about his spying, and he’d forgotten about other aspects of his life..." Read more

"...It is also a compelling work - informative, readable, with anecdotes , insights and impressions of David Cornwell culled from a wide variety of..." Read more

"I found this biography a frustrating read ...." Read more

Customers find the book too long by at least 400 pages.

"...I ploughed through it all despite that.This book is too long by at least 400 pages...." Read more

"Could not get into this book, unlike his novels. Too long , too many details and overall I found it tiresome." Read more

"Very interesting. Enjoyed it, read it all. Perhaps a bit too long , started to get repetitive towards end." Read more

" Too long and too detailed and not well written." Read more

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John le Carré: The Biography Kindle Edition

• Print length 672 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Harper
• Publication date November 3, 2015
• File size 8160 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

“What could have been a cloying hagiography or a lurid warts-and-all exposé is instead a balanced, focused and compelling study of a man of depth and individuality… This biography expertly shows how distance, distrust and even disillusionment have informed Mr le Carré and influenced his bestselling fiction.” — The Economist

“In John le Carré: The Biography, Mr. Sisman creates an insightful and highly readable portrait of a writer and a man who has often been as elusive and enigmatic as his fictional heroes.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“Loose threads are what fascinate most about Adam Sisman’s biography of David Cornwell, who at 84 still writes and publishes knotty, brainy thrillers under the pseudonym John le Carré…Best of all, Sisman provides aficionados of le Carré‘s fiction with canny assessments of, and inside information on all his written work.” — USA Today

“The major themes of Adam Sisman’s meticulously researched John le Carré: The Biography are twofold: the desperate search for love and artful self-invention through spying and writing fiction . . . . [the book] is unfailingly engrossing.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“A candid and enthralling account of heartache, betrayal and adventure, and how hard facts helped create great fiction.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Admiring without being toadying, detailed without being overstuffed, highly readable and, above all, knowledgeable about the work. . . . Sisman is the kind of thorough, serious writer who inspires trust...and what we take away is a new appreciation of le Carré‘s full range.” — Joseph Kanon for The New York Times Book Review

“It is a disappointment to reach the end of John le Carré which is admirably scholarly.” — Wall Street Journal

“Sisman has written an admirable biography. It’s at its best when recounting...David’s struggles to escape from his father’s malign influence and find purpose in life, which he did when the worldwide success of his third novel...liberated him to write full time.” — The Financial Times

“John le Carré shows us that the novelist’s real life is just as fascinating as those le Carré depicts in his novels…There’s a con-artist, larger-than-life father; a destructive, blockbuster affair with a good friend’s wife; dust-ups with publishers; and tetchy relationships with various movie stars.” — The Oregonian (Portland)

“A fascinating [and] superb biography, bristling with fresh insights.” — BBC.com

“A talented biographer brings the great spy novelist in from the cold.” — Washington Independent Review of Books

“The definitive [authorized!] biography of the internationally adored author of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”-arguably one of the most important and influential writers of the post-World War II period-by the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biographer Adam Sisman.” — My Edmonds News (Seattle, WA)

From the Back Cover

Back in 1963, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold made its pseudonymous author, John le Carré, a worldwide publishing sensation. Since then, le Carré has produced another twenty-one bestselling novels. A master at weaving fiction with fact, le Carré creates complex protagonists who expose tantalizing glimpses into the author’s own character. But appearances are deceptive. The real truth is that David Cornwell, the man behind the pseudonym and one of the world’s most celebrated writers, has remained an enigma for more than half a century.

In this authoritative biography short-listed for the 2016 Pen Award, Adam Sisman explores how the central themes of Cornwell’s life defined his fiction. From his lonely, “hugless” childhood to his early recruitment by British intelligence and the evolution of his spycraft, to his fraught roles as husband and family man, Cornwell’s personal history encompasses the basic questions at the heart of his work: What does espionage mean in human terms? To what extent is betrayal acceptable in the name of love? How does a person manage the endless need for forgiveness, especially from oneself?

Written with exclusive access to David Cornwell, his private archive, and his family, friends, enemies, ex-intelligence colleagues, and ex-lovers—and featuring a wealth of previously unseen photographic material—Sisman’s biography at last brings in from the cold a man whose life has been as complex, confounding, and filled with treachery as any of his novels.

About the Author

Product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00KVHURXW
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper; Illustrated edition (November 3, 2015)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 3, 2015
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 8160 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 672 pages
• #259 in Biographies of the Rich & Famous
• #272 in Biographies & Memoirs of Authors
• #355 in Biographies of Actors & Entertainers

About the author

Adam sisman.

Adam Sisman is a writer specialising in biography, living in Bristol, England. His second book, Boswell's Presumptuous Task, won a National Books Critics Circle award. "Mr. Sisman has an ideal biographical style: inquisitive and open, serious yet not severe," Dwight Garner wrote of Sisman's life of Hugh Trevor-Roper in the New York Times: "I’d read him on anyone.”

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 54% 27% 14% 1% 3% 54%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 54% 27% 14% 1% 3% 27%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 54% 27% 14% 1% 3% 14%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 54% 27% 14% 1% 3% 1%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 54% 27% 14% 1% 3% 3%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book contains a wealth of information and interpretation that make it worthwhile to read. They also describe the writing style as well-written and intimate. However, some find the content tedious and repetitive in places. Opinions are mixed on the biography, with some finding it excellent and others saying it's not a great one.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book contains a wealth of information and interpretation that makes it worthwhile to read. They also say it's well-written, interesting, and fascinating. Customers also describe the book as detailed and descriptive, providing an interesting look into British society after WW II.

"...I found this biography to be an excellent supplement to my teaching resources , enabling me to provide some unique insights to students about the..." Read more

"...It will give insight into the life experiences and thought processes surrounding the authorship of his various books, which I found very interesting." Read more

"...It did help to gain an understanding of books when reading - I read "Smiley's People" afterwards, and the biographical detail helped...." Read more

"...While at times tedious reading, the book contains a wealth of information and interpretation that make it worthwhile to persevere...." Read more

Customers find the book well worth the read, brilliant, and interesting, even though it's lengthy.

"I believe that this is an outstanding work , both well researched and well written...." Read more

"...I found this one to be balanced and well researched and written ...." Read more

"...love many of the le Carre novels as I do then this was an interesting although lengthy and somewhat repetitive read because le Carre is an..." Read more

"... Well worth reading for anyone who has enjoyed the span of le Carre's work." Read more

Customers find the writing style well-written, interesting, and intimate. They also say it's written with deep sympathy and understanding.

"I believe that this is an outstanding work, both well researched and well written ...." Read more

"An excellent biography, written with a deep sympathy for and understanding of the subject...." Read more

"This is a very well written , detailed and fascinating biography of a great writer...." Read more

"This book is certainly comprehensive but there is way too much verbiage and over- description...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the biography. Some find it excellent, with fascinating parallels between life and fiction. They also appreciate the work of great dedication to David Cornwell. However, others say it's not great and contains too much arcane information for average le Carre readers.

"...The result is a very good biography . Something about it keeps me from calling it the definitive biography...." Read more

" An excellent biography , written with a deep sympathy for and understanding of the subject...." Read more

"...However, there is far too much arcane information than the average le Carre reader/fan is likely to appreciate...." Read more

"This is a very well written, detailed and fascinating biography of a great writer ...." Read more

Customers find the content complex and tedious toward the end. They also say the book is repetitive and disjointed in places.

"...as I do then this was an interesting although lengthy and somewhat repetitive read because le Carre is an interesting fellow, but Sisman does slide..." Read more

"...It is very detailed and at times seemed to get bogged down , but overall it is a great read that is exciting and moves at a good pace...." Read more

"...and forth discussions about LeCarre's possible "false memories" gets tedious , too...." Read more

"...too long and detailed, especially toward the end where it begins to get somewhat tedious ...." Read more

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