He does so again in his first book of non-fiction, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life.

Le Carré has long protested that he is no expert on the spy trade, even though he was part of that world for some time. The use of “and that” is just another little sign that Fred isn’t quite one of us, the self-elected Set that stands behind England’s crumbling imperial mission. Leiser remembers the picture as showing “dogs, cottages, and that”, which is perhaps intended to reflect the world we leave behind for ever when we enter the secret world.ĭogs don’t generally fare well in spy fiction (too obviously faithful, perhaps) and cottages are more often places of homosexual entrapment than peaceful retirement. It’s the perfect image for how le Carré functions as an artist and how even the clearest details of narrative blur and slip the moment we have them securely in mind, how character and personality are shifting, uncertain qualities. He was walking by the river and stopped to watch a pavement artist working in the rain, still drawing even though his picture was washing away as it was created. Towards the end of le Carré’s fourth novel, The Looking Glass War, the loyal, doomed returning agent Fred Leiser - who shares something of George Smiley’s troubling vulgarity of aspect - tells a German girl about something that happened to him back in London.

Sisman le carre