The Secret Pilgrim

Until the publication this year of Legacy of Spies, this book was the “last” George Smiley novel. Except that it's not really about Smiley, nor is it really a novel. Let me explain.

Le Carré says in his afterword to the book that he wanted to address the world as it stood after ‘glasnost'. Where do we go after the Cold War ends, how do we deal with a post-Communist Russia. Who are the new enemies? Is there common ground? The novel was published in 1990. Oh how the world has changed.

What Le Carré gives us is a potted history of the Cold War through the eyes of an everyman spy called Ned, with Smiley used as window dressing in a framing device of a dinner at the spy training college at Sarratt. Smiley is used to muse on the new world order, past mistakes and the very nature of spying. The answers are sort of provided by Ned's history as a spy in what is essentially an interlinked series of short stories that go from the sixties up to the late 1980's.

Ned, a two dimensional cypher at best, takes us from London to Munich, Russia to the Far East, to the brutalities of Cold War Poland and the grubby, lonely men used by foreign powers to gather intelligence. The writing is superb throughout, since Le Carré is a master, but you can't help but feel that some of these tales are stories that he couldn't find a home for in a full length novel.

The conclusion is that there are no easy answers. At the time of publication the world was waiting with bated breath to see how Russia would change. The benefit of hindsight shows us that the new enemy is a faceless Jihadi and a ‘War on Terror', that Russia is once again under the thumb of a dictator seeking to destabilise the West, that spies and intelligence gathering remain a necessary evil, even if the Cold War networks are not as prevalent given advances in technology.

Fort me the best part of the book was that set during the Tinker Tailor timeline, with Bill Haydon in full flow at the height of his powers. That's the book I'd like to read. The Traitor's Tale told from Haydon's point of view.

So a good read then. Not top notch Le Carré, but enjoyable nonetheless.