A Legacy of Spies

John le Carré

Sep 2017 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

'A brilliant novel of deception, love and trust to join his supreme cannon' Evening Standard

'Vintage le Carré. Immensely clever, breathtaking. Really, not since The Spy Who Came in from the Cold has le Carré exercised his gift as a storyteller so powerfully and to such thrilling effect' John Banville, Guardian

Peter Guillam, former disciple of George Smiley in the British Secret Service, has long retired to Brittany when a letter arrives, summoning him to London. The reason? Cold War ghosts have come back to haunt him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of the Service are to be dissected by a generation with no memory of the Berlin Wall. Somebody must pay for innocent blood spilt in the name of the greater good . . .

'Utterly engrossing and perfectly pitched. There is only one le Carré. Eloquent, subtle, sublimely paced' Daily Mail

'Splendid, fast-paced, riveting' Andrew Marr, Sunday Times

'Remarkable. It gives the reader, at long last, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that have been missing for 54 years. Like wine, le Carré's writing has got richer with age' The Times

'Perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the 20th century in Britain. He's in the first rank' Ian McEwan

'One of those writers who will be read a century from now' Robert Harris

Sunday Times bestseller, September 2017

Ratings and reviews

Bit of shame this book, got bored reading it. I have read others around the same theme written by John. Most of the book revolved around Peter sat reading circus reports and transcripts, it may have got better later on but didn't work for me and gave up. I struggled with it for several weeks, dipping in reading a bit then going back to work after my lunch break. In contrast I read "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" in 5 days, some late nights and a gripping read.

I can't imagine how this book reads to someone who isn't well-versed in Le Carré’s Smileyverse. It's satisfying to get some emotional payback after the pitiless ending of so many novels. I couldn't help but be disappointed that we once again have no Final Girl left standing: the author doesn't seem to have it in him. It's a testament to the length of Le Carré’s career that this book refers to both iPads and stories which were filmed in black-and-white. I'd recommend it to fans, but it's a poor introduction.

A relatively short and less dense book than any lumped into "The Karla Trilogy" and slightly disappointing to me because of its relative brevity. However, that's being too picky. I really enjoyed this. Without throwing out too many spoilers it ties together events written about in "The spy who came in from the cold" and that book's chronology with the later Smiley stories, particularly "Tinker Tailor..." and "Smiley's People". For me, Le Carré writes the best spy stories.

About the author

John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the University of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5 & 6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novel, Silverview, was published in 2021.