Book description
The last of John Le Carr 's espionage novels to feature his most
enduring and well-loved character, George Smiley, and a gripping feat
of narrative brilliance, The Secret Pilgrim is published in
Penguin Modern Classics with an afterword by the author.
The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training
academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his
passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks
the truth - perhaps the last the students will ever hear. As they
listen, Ned recalls his own painful triumphs and inglorious failures,
in a career that took him from the Western Isles of Scotland to
Hamburg and from Israel to Cambodia. He asks himself: Did it do any
good? What did it do to me? And what will happen to us now? In this
final Smiley novel, the great spy gives his own humane and unexpected answers.
John le Carr was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern
and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British
Intelligence during the Cold War. For the last 50 years he has lived
by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.
If you enjoyed The Secret Pilgrim, you might like le Carr 's
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, also available in Penguin
Modern Classics.
'Consummate and enthralling'
Observer
John le Carr was educated at the University of Berne (where he
studied German literature for a year) and at Lincoln College, Oxford,
where he graduated with a first-class honours degree in modern
languages. From 1959 to 1964 he was a member of the British Foreign
Service, serving first as Second Secretary in the British Embassy in
Bonn and subsequently as Political Consul in Hamburg. He started writing
novels in 1961, and since then has published twenty-one titles.
