The Secret Life of John le Carré: A portrait of two literary men having a breakdown

David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, claimed his multiple infidelities were a ‘drug’ for his writing – but the discovery of them sent a planned biography off the rails. Robert McCrum asks: does Adam Sisman’s distressed, fascinating, and mildly vengeful follow-up change anything?

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier guy: John le Carré pictured in March 1965 (Getty)

Ever since The Spy Who Came in from the Cold appeared in 1963, John le Carré (aka David Cornwell), has bewitched his readers with contemporary spy novels (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; Smiley’s People) that seemed to catch the soul of the age. To some, such as Philip Roth, he was a major English novelist; to others, like Anthony Burgess, a jumped-up thriller writer. Whatever your verdict, there’s no doubt that he policed the mystery of his pseudonymous enigma, with an almost sinister zeal, to remarkable effect. When he began to entertain the idea of a “life”, it was a fair bet that the old magician would ensure it was the cornerstone of his claim on posterity. Dame Fortune, however, had a twist up her sleeve.

The Secret Life of John le Carré is his biographer’s painfully honest and anguished retrospective on his torturous collaboration with a living literary icon, a project that dragged him to the depths. Adam Sisman is the respected author of Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr Johnson. He was probably aware of the risks in such a contract. Long before he proposed himself for mission impossible, he must also have known that Le Carré’s alter ego would not freely comply with the merciless audit of life-writing. At least one would-be biographer had been chased off with writs; a second, the writer Robert Harris, was wooed, then frozen out. In fairness, Sisman’s overtures seemed to augur well.

In May 2010, Sisman sent a letter to John le Carré offering his services as a biographer, a letter he probably regrets. In response, the celebrated recluse seemed nothing but charm itself. He flattered Sisman, dropped his guard (“I am very divided about how to respond”), confessed a “messy private life” and closed with a tempting coda, “I would wish you to write without constraints”. A fateful agreement followed. Both Cornwell and Sisman believed that their desires had been fulfilled. The writer was confident in his choice; the biographer celebrated a literary coup. At this stage in their mutual courtship, Sisman was on best behaviour, while Cornwell’s famous charm was in seduction mode. He had, writes Sisman, “the ability to make people love him even when they knew that they shouldn’t”.