Adam Sisman on John le Carré

From his bleak childhood – the departure of his mother when he was five was followed by ‘sixteen hugless years’ in the dubious care of his father, a serial-seducer and con-man – through recruitment by both MI5 and MI6, to his emergence as the master of the espionage novel, John le Carre has repeatedly quarried his life for his fiction. In doing so, he has become one of the most important novelists alive today. Adam Sisman’s biography  has been written with exclusive access to le Carré himself, to his private archive and to many of the people closest to him, and promises to shine new light on this elusive figure.