ReviewBook review: in search of the real John le Carré in his wilderness of mirrors

John le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman (Bloomsbury Publishing) 

In literature, posterity is the name of the game. Espionage novelist 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. 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 must have known what he was risking, but possibly underestimated the fathomless complexity of his subject. Besides, who could capture le Carré, a romantic “lost boy” whose appetite for telling his own story can only be satisfied by enthralling reinvention?

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.

Cornwell obviously retains a deep ambivalence towards this version of himself; and 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.