I am reading A Legacy of Spies by John Le Carré. Viking published it in 2017 and then Penguin published it in 2018. This book is gripping. I’m only putting it down to write my blog, it’s been a few days since my last post. It is written in the first person, with Peter Guillam as the narrator. All the old characters from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy feature, so it is very much a continuation of a series.
The first person narration alternates with documents such as reports, minutes of meetings, and reported conversations presented like a script. It’s a technique that works very well, but I don’t think I could use it for the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures. Nevertheless it’s useful to see the master in action.
A Legacy of Spies was Le Carré’s third from last book. Agent Running in the field followed it in 2019, and Silverview in 2021. John Le Carré was the pen name of David Cornwell, who died in 2020, in Truro, aged 89. Fortunately he left us a wonderful legacy of books, twenty-six according to Wikipedia. He was undoubtably a talented writer, but also knew his subject inside out. He had worked for both MI5 and MI6. Cornwell worked as an intelligence officer for around six years, until Kim Philby’s betrayal ended his intelligence career, and presumably those of many other agents.
I would like to have met David Cornwell. His views on politics were so aligned with my own. On Brexit Wikipedia quotes his as saying “This is without doubt the greatest catastrophe and the greatest idiocy that Britain has perpetrated since the invasion of Suez“. “Nobody is to blame but the Brits themselves – not the Irish, not the Europeans.” “The idea, to me, that at the moment we should imagine we can substitute access to the biggest trade union in the world with access to the American market is terrifying”
David Cornwell had Irish ancestry and was able to secure Irish citizenship. Sadly I haven’t been able to find a close Irish ancestor in my family tree. But at least I found Sir Anthony Standen, The Spy who Sank the Armada.