My Washington Times Review Of John Le Carre's 'A Legacy Of Spies'

The Washington Times ran my review of John le Carre’s A Legacy of Spies.

Although I don’t subscribe to John le Carre’s leftist worldview, I’ve been reading and enjoying his spy novels since I was a teenager in the 1960s.

I’m not fond of most of his post-Cold War novels, as his political and anti-American sentiments mar the stories for me, but I admire greatly his earlier novels, such as “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” based on the notorious British spy and traitor Kim Philby, as well as “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.”

In his latest novel, “A Legacy of Spies,” his 24th, the 85-year-old author returns to the scene of the crimes, so to speak, from “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” and his other Cold War novels. His great character, the brilliant, bespectacled, physically frog-like master spy, George Smiley, appears in the novel, albeit briefly.

But Smiley is the center of conversation throughout the novel between former spy Peter Guillam and officials of the current-day British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, and formally known as the “Circus” in Mr. Smiley’s day. (The old headquarters was located at Cambridge Circus in London).

… Peter Guillam, now elderly and in retirement, is the central character in “A Legacy of Spies.” He is recalled to London by SIS headquarters to answer questions regarding the operation that resulted in the death of British intelligence officer Alec Leamas and his companion, Elizabeth Gold, who were shot and killed at the Berlin Wall in “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.” The grown children of the two are suing the SIS and intelligence officials have discovered that nearly all of the classified records of the operation were destroyed by Smiley, or by someone under his command. Guillam, perhaps?

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/31/book-review-a-legacy-of-spies/  

John Le Carre's Most Famous Character George Smiley To Return In New Novel, 'A Legacy Of Spies'

Although I don't subscribe to British spy novelist John le Carre's leftist worldview and rabid anti-Americanism, I am an admirer of his early novels featuring frog-like intelligence officer George Smiley, such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honorable Schoolboy. 

So I look forward to a new le Carre novel that brings back George Smiley, as well as Peter Guillam.

Danuta Kean at the British newspaper the Guardian reports on the news of the new novel.

George Smiley, John le Carré’s iconic cold war spymaster, is to return for the first time in 25 years in a new novel by the beloved spy-turned-author.

A Legacy of Spies, due to be published on 7 September, will also see the return of Smiley’s colleagues from the British secret service – or the Circus, as they were known in Le Carré’s original books. The bestselling noveles famously drew on the author’s own experience of working for British intelligence in the 1950s and 60s.

Though scant details have been released by publisher Viking, a division of Penguin Random House, the new novel will feature Smiley protege Peter Guillam, who in his old age has retired from the world of spooks to a farm in southern Brittany.

Summoned back to London, Guillam and his colleagues are subject to scrutiny for past misdemeanours, committed at a time when there were fewer scruples about the methods used to win the ideological war raging between the west and the Soviets.

According to Le Carré’s agent, Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown, the book was written in “a fever” over the past 12 months. Though Geller refused to reveal details of the plot, he said that it would “close George Smiley’s story”, which began in 1961 with Le Carré’s debut novel, Call for the Dead: “When I received the draft I had to keep starting it again and pinching myself that I was in the company of all these great characters from the Circus,” he said. “It really is going to be one of his finest, if not his finest, novel.” 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/07/george-smiley-to-return-new-john-le-carre-novel-a-legacy-of-spies 

Note: You can also read my Washington Times review of the John le Carre biography via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/12/my-washington-times-review-of-john-le.html 

Writers To Debate Whether Ian Fleming Or John Le Carre Is The Better Spy Novelist

Some years ago actor George C. Scott refused to accept an Oscar for his great portrayal of General Patton in the film Patton.

I agreed with what he said at the time, which was that art should not a competition. You simply can not hold up two great paintings and say, "And the winner is..."

So I can't say I like the idea of a debate on whether the late Ian Fleming (seen in the above photo) or John le Carre (seen in the below photo) is the better spy novelist, which, as the The Spy Command noted, will soon take place.

Intelligence Squared, which stages debates and presentations on various topics, will hold a debate this month whether Ian Fleming or John Le Carre is the better spy novelist.

Representing Fleming (1908-64) will be Anthony Horowitz, author of the James Bond continuation novel Trigger Mortis, according to the group’s website.

Advocating for LeCarre (real name David Cornwell, b. 1931) will be David Farr, who adapted LeCarre’s The Night Manager for the BBC. The debate is scheduled for Nov. 29 at Emmanuel Centre in London.

And yet...

Ian Fleming served as a British naval intelligence officer and assistant to the Royal Navy's Director of Naval Intelligence in WWII. He later wrote admittedly highly romanticized novels that featured a character by the name of Bond, James Bond. He said he wrote the books unabashedly for his own and the public's entertainment.

The novels are highly entertaining and they are far darker and more complex than the films, and some of them, like From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, are first-rate thrillers.

John le Carre, who, like Fleming, was a British intelligence officer, having served in both MI5 and MI6 as a young man, considers himself to be a much more serious novelist than Fleming, which means he is a much duller thriller writer.

As I wrote in my Philadelphia Inquirer review of le Carre's novel Our Kind of Traitor, le Carre wrote a talky thriller that unfolds mostly through dialogue. And he offers some very good, smart writing.

Le Carre has written, in my view, some fine spy novels, such as the "Karla" trilogy that featured a character by the name of George Smiley; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley's People, and The Honorable Schoolboy. I can't say I care much for his later novels, which are marred, as I wrote in my Washington Times review of John le Carre: The Biography, with his shrill leftist and anti-American views.      

The two novelists are very different, and I like them both, and they should not, like Scott said, be compared or be in competition.

And yet, I'm interested in this debate, because le Carre is often presented as the "realistic" antidote to Fleming's "fantasies," and le Carre has been highly critical of Fleming in the past.

You can read about the upcoming debate via the below link:

https://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/writers-to-debate-whether-fleming-lecarre-is-better/

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/10/russian-crooks-corrupt-brits-at-large.html

And you can read my Washington Times review of John le Carre: The Biography via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/12/my-washington-times-review-of-john-le.html

And you can read my Crime Beat column, Spy Writer Vs. Spy Writer, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/08/spy-writer-vs-spy-writer-john-le-carre.html

Note: Below are photos of Sean Connery as James Bond and Alec Guinness as George Smiley:

George Smiley Was My Father, Says John Bingham's Daughter

Neil Tweedie at the British newspaper the Telegraph spoke to former MI5 officer John Bingham's daughter Charlotte.

John Bingham, seventh Baron Clanmorris of Newbrook in the County of Mayo, always drank at the bar holding his glass in his left hand, despite being right-handed. The reason was to be found in his right pocket. “He always had a knuckleduster among the change,” explains his daughter, Charlotte.
 
“As a child, I just thought everybody did.”

There was the sword stick, too. And a revolver. And lock picks, for a little light breaking and entering. “I was about five when I found the revolver,” says Miss Bingham. “It was in a chest and my mother said, 'Go and get me this manuscript.’ And I pulled it out and underneath was hidden this gun, and I picked it up – as children do – and said, 'Ah! Look, a gun. What fun.’
 

“I became aware of what he did for a living when I was 18. He told me about this secret life. He would say to my mother, 'I can’t do such and such tonight.’ She’d say, 'Why not?’, and he’d say, 'I’ve got to do a burglary.’ ”
 

John “Jack” Bingham was one of the most effective intelligence officers produced by the security service, MI5, during the Second World War. 

... Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People are successful on page and screen because of their seeming approximation to reality, presenting the secret world as a cynical layman would imagine it to be: shabby, morally ambiguous, an arena in which cruel and ultimately pointless games of life and death are played out. In le Carré’s world, there are few really good guys.
 
Jack Bingham did not concur. Until his death in 1988 he retained an iron belief in the rightness of his cause, the defence of the British way of life. Imperfect it may have been, but it was better than all the rest. The agents Bingham ran in war and peace, fighting firstly fascism and then communism, were to him people of courage and honour, often humble and unselfish, acting for the best of intentions.

Le Carré, believed Bingham, ignored this noble aspect of secret work, seeking to establish moral equivalence between East and West. Jack, who enjoyed a successful subsidiary career as a crime writer, was dismayed by his former colleague’s reworking of history and told him so.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10683288/George-Smiley-was-my-father.html

Note: John Binham is the subject of Michael Jago's book, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham.  

Smiley's People: Spy Who Inspired George Smiley Accused John Le Carre Of 'Giving Comfort' To Britain's Enemies

Jasper Copping at the British newspaper the Telelgraph offers another piece on the late MI5 officer John Bingham and his views of spy thriller writer John le Carre.

The man who inspired George Smiley, one of Britain’s most celebrated fictional spies, accused his creator John le Carré of giving “comfort, pleasure and glee” to the country’s Cold War foes in his depiction of the secret service. 
 

John Bingham, who was le Carré’s former mentor in MI5 and model for Smiley, wrote to the author to express himself “puzzled” at what he saw as his disloyalty to the intelligence agencies, in his cynical portrayal of their activities and agents. 
 

Bingham wrote: “You are far from being pro-Soviet or pro-Communist, but I would think the attacks gave comfort and even pleasure and glee in some places.”
 

He added that he had “often been puzzled as to why you have so frequently attacked” the security services, adding “troops don’t normally improve by, in effect, being called a lousy lot of bums, and inefficient or ineffective to boot”. 
 

The letter was written in October 1979, the same month that a television adaptation of le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was broadcast on the BBC, with Alec Guinness starring as Smiley.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10678879/Spy-who-inspired-George-Smiley-accused-John-le-Carre-of-giving-comfort-to-Britains-enemies.html

You can also read an earlier post on Bingham/le Carre via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/03/british-mi5-officer-who-inspired-george.html

Note: John Bingahm is the subject of Michael Jago's book, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham.   

John Le Carre On John Bingham And The Inspiration For George Smiley

The British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on John le Carre's response to the claim that John Bingham, the MI5 officer le Carre based his character George Smiley on, despised le Carre's portrayal of British spies.

He is one of Britain’s most celebrated of literary characters of the twentieth century - a spymaster who personified the country’s Cold War intelligence battles. 
 

Now, his creator, John le Carré, has shed new light on the inspiration behind George Smiley, and defended himself against accusations that he had "hurt" his former mentor in the secret service, on whom the character was partly based. 
 

The author, who worked for both MI5 and MI6 during the 1950s and 1960s, has written to the Daily Telegraph to respond to accusations in Tuesday's newspaper which claimed that John Bingham, his former boss, had “deplored” the author’s portrayal of the intelligence services. The letter said Bingham had “not been treated as respectfully as he deserved by his protégé”. 
 

That intervention, from Lord Lexden, a Conservative peer and historian had, in turn, been prompted by revelations in last week's Daily Telegraph about Bingham’s achievements during the Second World War.     

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10676670/John-le-Carre-on-the-inspiration-for-George-Smiley.html

You can also read an earlier post on John Bingham via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/03/british-mi5-officer-who-inspired-george.html 

Letter To The Editor: John Bingham, The Wartime Spy Who Never Wanted To Be John Le Carre's Character George Smiley

In response to a piece in the British newspaper the Telegraph about MI5 officer John Bingahm, a reader sent the below letter to the editor:

SIR – John Bingham was one of our most remarkable Second World War spies. The M15 documents that have just been released (“Spy who turned Hitler’s British supporters into unwitting double agents”, report, February 28) show the scale of his achievement in neutralising the espionage of British fascists, who were more widespread than is supposed.
 

This modest hero, who was also the 7th Baron Clanmorris – an Ulster title without property – was not treated as respectfully as he deserved by his protégé, John le Carré, who immortalised him as George Smiley. He was hurt by the portrayal of his secret world in the novels.
 

The author, Bingham once said, “was my friend, but I deplore and hate everything he has done and said against the intelligence services”. No one cared more about his country and its institutions than John Bingham, to whom we owe so much.
 

Lord Lexden
London SW1

You can read the Telegraph piece on John Bingham via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/02/john-bingham-spy-who-turned-hitlers.html

Note: John Binham is also the subject of Michael Jago's book, The Man Who Was Smiley: The Life of John Bingham (Biteback) .

Journalist, Novelist, Patriot, Spy: The Life of John Bingham, Role Model For John Le Carre's George Smiley

Stella Rimington, the former director of the British security service MI5, reviewed Michael Jago's biography of John Bingham for the Spectator.

John Bingham joined MI5 before the war from Fleet Street, recruited by Maxwell Knight, a maverick but brilliant agent runner. Bingham worked on the Double X operations then, when the Service cut its staff after the war, took a post in the Allied Control Council in Hanover, trying to detect Soviet infiltrators among the flood of refugees seeking asylum in the Western zone. It was an experience which convinced him of the fragility of the security of Western Europe.

In 1950, at a time of increased focus on communism and Soviet espionage, following some sensational spy cases, the Service was recruiting again and Bingham rejoined. It was then that he began his parallel career as a crime writer, with the publication in 1952 of his first, partly autobiographical, novel, My Name is Michael Sibley.

When the much younger David Cornwell joined MI5 in 1958, Bingham became his professional mentor and also helped start him on his writing career by introducing him to his literary agent. Bingham’s son Simon records that Cornwell’s pen name, Le Carré, came from the office nickname for his father, ‘The Square’. In a radio interview in 1999 Cornwell revealed that Bingham was a model for Smiley, though in the following year, in an introduction for the re-publication of some of Bingham’s early novels, he says that Bingham was one of two men who went into the making of George Smiley.

But the John Bingham who emerges from the pages of Michael Jago’s book seems, in everything but appearance, to be about as far from Smiley as you could get. Certainly F4, with its nurturing relationship with its agents, many of whom worked for the Service for years and ended with a pension, was a very different place from the nuanced, ethically ambiguous world of Smiley and his colleagues. Le Carré wrote that Bingham felt betrayed by his cynical portrayal of the intelligence services. Bingham himself went on to write a considerable number of successful crime stories, but though he carried on writing until his old age, he never achieved his ambition of producing a spy story to rival the success of Le Carré’s books.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/8852241/journalist-novelist-patriot-spy/