51: John le Carré: Secrets & Lies
About this episode
The episode discusses the life and work of John le Carré, exploring his childhood and the influences that shaped his writing.
‘David at his worst was a liar but John le Carré at his best was a truth teller.’ These were the intriguing words with which his biographer Adam Sisman concluded the conversation when he joined the Slightly Foxed Podcast team at the kitchen table to discuss the life and work of the writer who was born David Cornwell but who is better known to the world as John le Carré. Graham Greene, whom le Carré greatly admired, once said that ‘an unhappy childhood is an asset for a writer’, and this young David had in spades. He was only 5 when he and his older brother were abandoned by their mother, to be brought up by their father, a domineering, larger-than-life conman, wife-beater and sexual tyrant, whose overwhelming personality would haunt David for the rest of his life and was the inspiration for his novel A Perfect Spy . These ‘hugless’ childhood years, as David called them, were ones of stark contrasts. At one moment the family would be living like princes, the next bailiffs were in the house and their father might even be in jail. The boys were taught early on to lie convincingly in order to bail their father out, so the scene was set for the kind of double life that David would…
People in this episode
Guest: Adam Sisman
Topics covered
- biography
- literature
- writing
- childhood
- secret service
Keywords
- John le Carré
- David Cornwell
- Adam Sisman
- biography
- Graham Greene
- writing
- secret service
More episodes of Slightly Foxed
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- 56: The Thrilling World of Dick Francis
- 55: At Home with the Brontës
- 54: The Many Lives of Muriel Spark
- 53: Dervla Murphy: A Life at Full Tilt
- 52: William Golding: A Literary Colossus
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