Adam Sisman on The Secret Life of John le Carré

'Now that he is dead, we can know him better.' This is the tale of an extraordinary secret life of a great novelist, which his biographer could not publish while le Carre was alive.

Secrecy came naturally to John le Carre, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Nowhere was this more so than in his private life.

Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over four decades. To keep these relationships secret, he made use of tradecraft that he had learned as a spy: code names and cover stories, cut outs, safe houses and dead letter boxes. Such affairs introduced both jeopardy and excitement into what was otherwise a quiet, ordered life.

Le Carre seemed to require the stimulus they provided in order to write, though this meant deceiving those closest to him. It is no coincidence that betrayal became a recurrent theme in his work.

Adam Sisman's definitive biography, published in 2015, revealed much about the elusive spy-turned-novelist; yet le Carre was adamant that some subjects should remain hidden, at least during his lifetime.

The Secret Life of John le Carre is the story of what was left out, and offers reflections on the difficult relationship between biographer and subject. More than that, it adds a necessary coda to the life and work of this complex, driven, restless man. The Secret Life of John le Carre reveals a hitherto-hidden perspective on the life and work of the spy-turned-author and a fascinating meditation on the complex relationship between biographer and subject.

Adam Sisman is the author of Boswell's Presumptuous Task, winner of the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the biographer of John le Carre, A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. Among his other works are two volumes of letters by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews.

'Not merely the conclusive homage to a compulsively fascinating character, but an insightful study into the biographical process itself' ~ Nicholas Shakespeare