In an interview on Spies

We now go on to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Is this the best John le Carré, do you reckon?

I think it sets the standard for all spy literature. It’s very hard to improve on The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It’s the classic le Carré recipe of compromised individuals trying to find their way through a labyrinth of deception and self-deception and he’s set a standard there that no one’s really quite equalled. I think it’s very telling that the greatest writers of spy literature have all themselves been spies: Somerset Maugham, John le Carré, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene. And le Carré exemplifies the fact that spying and fiction-writing are not very different things. In both of them, the central element is to create a false world, and then try to lure either the reader or the enemy into it. That’s what The Spy Who Came in from the Cold does, and it’s about the moral confusions that come from this extraordinary capacity for self-deception and deception.

I suppose the other thing spies and novelists have in common is a real understanding of other people’s psychology. What makes le Carré’s novels so interesting is he really gets under people’s skin.

Yes, that’s exactly right. They are brilliant psychological works; they’re not just adventure stories. They are glimpses into the darker corners of the human heart and human motivation, and that’s the ultimate role of the novelist.

In an interview on the Secret Service

Let’s move on to your next book, which is about an iconic time in the history of the British Secret Service. This is The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré.

This novel shows a very different kind of world and service. It is a grainy monochrome world with amoral spymasters moving pawns about the board in this grim Cold War era. These are gripping psychological novels as much as anything else. The novel has Smiley in it but the central figure is Alec Leamas, who is a hard-bitten veteran whose duty to the Service conflicts with his relationships and his humane side. He has to work in an amoral value-free world.

This is at the far end of the spectrum from James Bond, but it also says a lot about the bureaucracy of the Service. The decisions made back home in what le Carré calls ‘the Circus’ – head office – are really important and you don’t see so much of this in the James Bond books. Le Carré’s book is from a moment in history when you have this monolithic kind of Soviet enemy with the West defying it. And you have spymasters on each side who have perhaps more in common with each other than their own fellow countrymen. And there is a little bit of that, too, in the real story, I am sure.