Spy-master’s vignettes revealing and to be relished

Consummate storyteller John le Carre never misses a trick -  even when it comes to his own life, writes Peter Stupples.

THE PIGEON TUNNEL: Stories from My Life
John le Carre
Viking/Penguin Random House

I could not put  this book down, swept along by a well-honed style and constantly, and professionally designed, delayed gratification.

The spy-master John le Carre (David Cornwell) has put together  38 vignettes, episodes from his past, each one of which could serve as a masterpiece of narrative suspense.

Eight of these "episodes" have been published before, embellished in some cases, in others slightly revised.

Le Carre writes of his early work in the intelligence service, and his intelligent observation as a diplomat, a mode of operation that never left him or his imagination for the rest of his life, not unlike Graham Greene, to whom he frequently alludes.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold made le Carre’s name and fortune, lifting the lid on the Secret Service, to an unwelcome extent as far as the Service itself was concerned.

And these vignettes lift the lid on a number of other aspects of post-war European and American life, from Konrad Adenauer in Germany to Margaret Thatcher in Britain, from Kim Philby to Richard Burton.

Le Carre writes of his modest role in these events but, nevertheless, he also writes with the relish of a first-class storyteller whose life has presented him with a treasure trove of spicy anecdotes.

We are told early in the book that he will keep the most painful part of his reminiscences  until the end, his relationship with his father.

It is the longest vignette, relating the life of a conman of whom his son despairs but also, between the lines, cannot help but both admire and love.

Of course a spy is the arch-conman and there is much of his father in John le Carre, which he does not hide.

Not unlike Charles Dickens, le Carre had a miserable childhood, with a wayward father and a mother who was unable to offer him affection, so that he was driven to make a life for himself as far from ‘‘home’’ as possible, but that ‘‘home’’ kept dogging his footsteps and his novels.

This drive to get away from "home" was accelerated in 1974, after his early literary success, when, in Hong Kong he had a moment of panic as he realised  he had made an error of fact when correcting proofs of Tinker Soldier Sailor Spy.

He had not been aware  there was a tunnel under the sea linking Hong Kong to mainland Kowloon.

He had relied too much on book-knowledge and not on first-hand experience.

"A dictum of Graham Greene’s was ringing somewhere in my ear: something to the effect that if you were reporting on human pain, you had a duty to share it."

He had experienced considerable pain as a child but now, as a successful novelist there was the danger of complacency.

So he set himself daunting tasks of "going out into the field," like a war journalist, covering

Lebanon, Vietnam, Panama, Sierra Leone and Moscow in 1993, other "theatres of the real", almost seeking danger to be able to incorporate it into fiction,  meeting frequently real spies, listening in to stories of their masters, the duplicitous politicians who played in the current run of the comedy of errors.

It is entertaining, as a reader, to be present at dinner in No.10 Downing Street, or on a film set with the stars, watching the writer sketch in a couple of pages indelible portraits or depict war and desolation.

Le Carre plays the part of the detached observer, not concerned with causes or placing blame.

Just spying on events, keeping his cover, with an eye for the way out if needed, so that, over a scotch or two he can spin a yarn for our voyeuristic entertainment.

He never misses a trick. 

- Peter Stupples teaches at the Dunedin School of Art.