He was the greatest English novelist of his generation, yet just before his death he became an Irish citizen of the EU. The reasons were both political and deeply personal, but at their heart lay one thing: betrayal
• An exclusive extract from his new novel
• Writers reveal their favourite le Carré
I’m looking at one of the last photographs of John le Carré. It was taken by his son Nick in October 2020. There is a mostly empty bottle of good beaujolais in front of him and a glimpse through the window behind of the Cornish landscape that he inhabited with such delight. His beloved wife and most important collaborator, Jane, is seated next to him, laughing heartily.
The man in the picture seems at home in the world, comfortable with who – and where – he is. Written over the last years of his life and completed by Nick, his final novel Silverview is now about to be published posthumously. The book is shot through with an elegiac kind of Englishness: beach huts in an out of season seaside town, greasy spoon cafes, net curtains.
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