Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré, read by Tom Hollander. This is the first novel in over 25 years to feature George Smiley, le Carré’s most beloved character.
Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself are to be scrutinised under disturbing criteria by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications.
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
From in out of the cold comes an exceptional, unexpected treat from the master spy novelist of the 20th Century, John LeCarre My goodness, I never expected another George Smiley novel from John Le Carre (David Cornwell). Especially given the preachy, liberal and cynical do-gooder tone of most of his literary output since the end of the Cold War. I feared he’d become the cranky old man of late 20th century thriller-masters and contented myself with his “stranger than fiction” personal history (one that reads like one of his novels) which makes up the first half of Adam Sisman’s fantastic biography. I thought…
I loved this book Being a long-time Le Carré fan, I loved this book, which casts light on the background of the operation detailed in “The spy who came in from the cold”. There is less descriptive material, which means that we miss Le Carré’s beautiful prose, but on the other hand, we get verbatim memos of operations, which are fascinating.
It’s OK Although during the cold war I actually did some work for MI5, I didn’t know that much about MI6, The Circus, except for what was presented to us through this guy’s almost perfect books.