Our kind of spy novelist

An anthology, edited by John Le Carre's son, takes us through the bestselling spy novelist's life through a series of revealing, yet delightful, collection of letters

A Private Spy: The Letters of John Le Carre 1945-2020 

Editor: Tim Cornwell 

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 752 

Price: Rs 2,202

The analogy would be limited overs cricket and Test cricket. Ian Fleming provides mass delight; John Le Carre (the pen name of the writer David Cornwell) whets the connoisseur’s appetite. The latter, who was also a spy, was, in addition to being a bestselling spy novelist, a prodigious letter-writer. A selection of his correspondence has now been published in an anthology edited by his son, and it is vintage Le Carre.

On October 15, 1963, he wrote to his stepmother Jean Cornwell addressing her