The Pigeon Tunnel

Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735220794
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
DON’T MISS THE PIGEON TUNNEL DOCUMENTARY—IN SELECT THEATERS AND STREAMING ON AppleTV+ OCTOBER 20TH! The New York Times bestselling memoir from John le Carré, the legendary author of A Legacy of Spies. “Recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur—by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth; visiting Rwanda’s museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide; celebrating New Year’s Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command; interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev; listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov; meeting with two former heads of the KGB; watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People; or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood. Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer’s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.

The Pigeon Tunnel

Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241976863
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING MEMOIR OF SPY-WRITING LEGEND JOHN LE CARRÉ 'As recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen' Financial Times From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer, John le Carré has lived a unique life. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive - reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison or watching Alec Guinness preparing for his role as George Smiley, this book invites us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood. Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters. 'No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times' Guardian 'When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré . . . These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind' Aung San Suu Kyi

Memoirs of a British Agent

Author: R. H. Bruce Lockhart
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1848326297
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Book Description
When first published in 1932, this memoir was an immediate classic, both as a unique eyewitness account of Revolutionary Russia and as one mans story of struggle, and tragedy set against the background of great events. Aged 25, Lockhart became the British Vice-Consul to Moscow in 1912. With revolution in the air, it was dangerous, decadent posting. The 'Boy Ambassador' became an eyewitness to pivotal events and in 1918 was charged with establishing a diplomatic understanding with the Bolsheviks, to ensure that Russia remained in the war against Germany. It was a precarious mission: Whitehall could not be seen support revolutionaries; Lockhart grew wary of his masters secret machinations; while Lenin and Trotsky's cordial relations with the British agent never quite dispelled their mistrust of the nation he represented. When Lockhart met Moura Budberg, who became the great love of his life, he was in an increasingly vulnerable position. In September 1918 he would be falsely accused of a counter-revolutionary plot to overthrow the Bolsheviks, and sent to the Loubianka. His account even inspired a Hollywood movie. From his evocative descriptions of revolutionary Moscow, where the champagne flowed as the bourgeoisie trembled, to his audiences with Trotsky and his brushes with death, this is a vivid, unique memoir.

The Secret Pilgrim

Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 1524797626
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Book Description
The acclaimed novel featuring George Smiley, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Legacy of Spies and The Night Manager, now an AMC miniseries The rules of the game, and of the world, have changed. Old enemies now yield to glasnost and perestroika. The killing shadows of the Cold War are flooded with light. The future is unfathomable. To train new spies for this uncertain future, one must show them the past. Enter the man called Ned, the loyal and shrewd veteran of the Circus. With the inspiration of his inscrutable mentor George Smiley, Ned thrills all as he recounts forty exhilarating years of Cold War espionage across Europe and the Far East—an electrifying, clandestine tour of honorable old knights and notorious traitors, triumph and failure, passion and hate, suspicion, sudden death, and old secrets that haunt us still. Praise for The Secret Pilgrim “Intriguing . . . magisterial . . . The many ingredients are skillfully marshaled. . . . Lucidly and elegantly controlled.”—The New York Times Book Review “Scorching . . . fascinating . . . seductive . . . a dazzler.”—Entertainment Weekly “Powerful . . . a highly absorbing tale.”—Newsday “Extraordinary.”—USA Today

A Delicate Truth

Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101618027
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Legacy of Spies. "A novel that beckons us beyond any and all expectations."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post A counter-terrorist operation, code-named Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister’s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be—or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher “Kit” Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit’s daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?

John le Carré’s Post–Cold War Fiction

Author: Robert Lance Snyder
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826274129
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
This is an analysis of the first 10 post—Cold War novels of one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction. This book challenges distinctions between “popular” and “serious” literature by recognizing le Carré as one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction, contributing to an overdue reassessment of his literary stature. Le Carré’s ten post–Cold War novels constitute a distinctive subset of his espionage fiction in their response to the momentous changes in geopolitics that began in the 1990s. Through a close reading of these novels, Snyder traces how—amid the “War on Terror” and transnationalism—le Carré weighs what is at stake in this conflict of deeply invested ideologies.

Pigeon in a Crosswalk

Author: Jack Gray
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451641362
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
From television producer Jack Gray comes a generational account of finding one’s way at work, at home, and even across the street. There are a lot of unforgettable characters in these pages: a loveable if possibly alcoholic dog; a set of grandparents who crush on Alex Trebek and obsess about death; Golden Girls and blue bloods, anchormen and Supreme Court justices; divas and wags—but the best character of all is the author himself. To read Jack Gray’s musings is to enter the company of a young man of titanic wit and talent. As he observes and echoes the fixations and neuroses of his generation and our times, he will make you squirm, guffaw, and ultimately marvel.

A Small Town in Germany

Author: John le Carre
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743431715
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
British security officer Alan Turner battles radical German students and neo-Nazis after an embassy flack disappears from Bonn with dozens of top secret files.

A Legacy of Spies

Author: John le Carré
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735225125
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The undisputed master returns with his first Smiley novel in more than twenty-five years--a #1 New York Times bestseller and ideal holiday gift. 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 scrutinized 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. In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.

A Most Wanted Man

Author: John le Carre
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416594892
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
A half-starved young Russian is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he?