John le Carré: The Biography

I'm a big Le Carré fan, and love nerding out on the lives of authors I love, so I was very excited for this biography. It is a fairly encyclopedic and relentlessly chronological dive into David Cornwell's life. I found it picked up steam after a few chapters (I started it in late 2020 then put it down for a while, and picked it up again in earnest about a month ago), especially once Sisman got into Cornwell's professional life – his recruitment into MI5 and onwards. Each novel Cornwell wrote was addressed on its own, which may be a bit over the top for some. I enjoyed the snippets of Cornwell's correspondence, the insights into his writing practice and how he searched for stories and characters, and to some extent his interactions with his publishers and agents, though Cornwell became peevish and demanding once he'd become well known. One of the highlights for me was his interaction and friendship with Alec Guinness, who played Smiley in the BBC series of Tinker, Taylor and Smiley's People- in my opinion, both masterpieces, and in the case of TTSS, superior to the more recent movie. Even Gary Oldman, as much as I love him, doesn't top Alec Guinness as Smiley. Other highlights are the bits about Graham Greene, another one of my author heroes, and
I would say this is not a book for casual readers of Le Carré, but for the die-hard fans, I found it fascinating and more intimate look into an author I will truly miss. The biography also reminded me of the Le Carré books I will want to re-read, as well as the few that I still need to read.