Dan Brotzel reviews revealing new biography on Britain’s master of espionage literature

John Le Carré – real name David Cornwall – has for decades enjoyed a status rare among writers: the master of a genre whose work is also considered real literature.

Yet, as the years have passed, and despite massive global success and countless film and TV adaptations – we seem to know less and less about him.

This absorbing new doorstopper from Sisman promises to change all that, with an in-depth study informed by hundreds of hours of access to the man himself.

Much of the first half of the book recounts the exploits of Cornwall’s father Ronnie, a fraudster and womaniser, and will be familiar to readers of A Perfect Spy.

Cornwall’s mother fled when he was five, leaving him to ‘16 hugless years’.

These betrayals, together with lonely years of bullying in boarding school, left deep marks on the adult Cornwall. The clandestine duplicity of service in MI5 and MI6 suits his emotionally stunted nature, though Sisman has to glean what he can of these years from other sources. Le Carré admits he was a spy but remains reticent as to his activities.

After the overnight success of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Cornwall morphs into Le Carré, the full-time writer, and the latter half of the book is a blurry succession of stories researched (Cornwall still travels widely and dangerously to flesh out his plots), novels reviewed, and contracts negotiated.

Though witnesses testify to Cornwall’s charisma, intelligence, sense of humour and amazing mimicry skills, it is hard to like him on this showing.

He claims at one point that he married his first wife on the advice of MI5, and sends his sons to boarding school, despite his own traumatic experiences there.

The mask has slipped, and we are the wiser and sadder for it.

John Le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman, £35 (ebook £11.88)
Sisman will discuss the book at Blackwell’s, Oxford, tonight (7pm to 8pm). Tickets £3.