I thought Le Carre was a long-time spy turned writer, but he was a dedicated writer almost from the beginning. One with connections. One with contempt for the upper class Brits.
The latter chapters deal mostly with details of publishing, reviews, etc. The beginning with his coming to terms with life. Beginning is more interesting.
I found myself wanting the biography of his con-man father, Ronnie, more than of the son. Ronnie puts Trump and his shady deals to shame. Ronnie would take from his son, his mother, old widows, young just-got-my-inheritance aristocrats, princes, dictators, and even his jailers. Many still loving him after they were fleeced. He would have made a classic American businessman.
( )

meget dybtgående skildring af David Cornwells liv og karriere.. Spændende læsning, med stor vægt på bøgerne i anden halvdel. Man får lyst til at læse dem alle igen. ( )

This book is ridiculously long, unless you are his hugest fan, you probably won't care about half the stuff in here. But the plus side is that if you ever wanted to know every single business deal his father Ronnie ever did, you will love the first 100 or so pages!

I won this from a goodreads giveaway. ( )

If you are even remotely interested in John Le Carre, you should read this book. No question it is a masterful study of an extremely complicated man and writer. ( )

Magnificent read on the life of one of my heroes. I rarely read biographies, but this one was one I savoured – reading sparingly in it, spreading it out over one whole month, after buying it straightaway in a bookstore in Utrecht. I came in, saw it from the corner of my eye, and despite a rucksack full of books, picked this thick one and almost ran to the cashier, in disbelief. Off to the central station, jumping in the train, and there it started. The book seller looked at me, and said – ‘Yes, interesting man. I would read this one too’. It is any good? As a biography? I dunno. It seems that Sisman was critical at the start with his references to events David Cornwell made up and which Sisman attributed to ‘false memory’.

In actual fact it becomes clear that David specialised early on in the art of cultivating multiple personalities and multiple versions of events. This is not surprising considering the propensity at conjuring, scheming and double-dealing of Ronnie, David’s maverick father. It provided an excellent preparation for David the spy and an even better school for David the entertaining raconteur, who could add spicy elements to a suspenseful story. The countless incidents of humiliation foisted on David and his brother John by their father, must have given David a bleak outlook on life and the motives of men. Ronnie was a womaniser, a drinker, a gambler, a connoisseur, a British gentleman, a Mafiosi. David’s mother disappeared from the scene early on in his life – she was fed up with Ronnie’s tricks which invariably resulted in another bankruptcy or jail sentence or both. Two traits emanate from such a childhood – a remarkable capacity to please and charm while at the same time embellishing the truth AND some difficulties with the female species (certainly when his father’s absence resulted in boarding school at Sherborne and later, teaching at Eton). One other remarkable thing about le Carre is his tendency to become an angry ‘old’ man over time, moving steadily to the left and more radical part of the political spectrum (contrary to many men, and particularly rare among the class of filthy rich men, whose ranks David has joined, no matter what or how). Ironically that is how I got to know le Carre – my first le Carre novel was a ‘The constant gardener’, one of his angry books, written in old age, speaking out against the baseless and morally bankrupt behaviour of the pharmaceuticals. Once I had read that I was hooked. Le Carre showed how one could write a book which is a million times more effective than whatever scientific research. This provided the seeds of my own writing aspirations (and disillusion with academia). I continued with reading all his recent work and then going backwards in time.

Of course another influential event in Le Carre’s life was his magnificent success with A spy who came in from the Cold. His third book was a game changer, not only for the genre of spy thrillers but also for David himself. My personal favourite of his cold war spy novels is Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. In between these two spy thrillers David went through a process of adjusting his life to his newly found affluence, experimenting with adultery – big time – and searching, initially, in vain for renewed success and greatness. It was only Tinker, tailor, which brought him back to the pinnacle of success. And from there it went on and on and on, starting with the magnificent BBC tv series made of Tinker, tailor with Alec Guinness starring as George Smiley (I still haven’t seen the series, but I did hugely enjoy the 2012 movie with Gary Oldman as George Smiley – one of the best movies made, ever – and with Gary Oldman starring big time, after his magnificent 24 hour Party people, a forgotten movie on a forgotten era of tremendous success of Manchester music).

Throughout the book it becomes clear David is a serious writer, who lives like a Hermit most of the time, talking books with his second wife Jayne whilst sticking to a strict writing routine in his rural dwellings in Cornwall. David is meticulous in his writing – rewriting complete manuscripts up to 8 times in a row, throwing out hundreds of pages, starting afresh if it does work for him. The man is a monument. In terms of his craft, I found it revealing that David seems capable only of developing his main protagonist characters once he meets a living equivalent, or to put it better, when he has met or been able to observe the base material of that character in the flesh. A final thing about the craft of writing is that David can develop a draft of a novel and then visit its main locations, and work his scenic impressions back into the novel. There are several scenes and moments that are described in the biography that provide interesting snippets and nuggets on the life of David. Like the scene where David has dinner with the PM at the invitation of Margaret Thatcher. The Dutch PM Ruud Lubbers also attends and despite him being the most savvy of all Dutch PMs in the post-war era, he confesses he doesn’t know Le Carre (Auchh!). I was equally delighted to read that David for his book The Mission Song, which engages with corporate resource exploitation in the Congo, visited the Eastern Congo with Michaela Wrong (so, so) and Jason Stearns (yes! The leading analytical light on the topic!!). ( )