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Winner of the Crime Fest HRF Keating Award 'Not merely the conclusive homage to a compulsively fascinating character, but an insightful study into the biographical process itself' Nicholas Shakespeare 'Now that he is dead, we can know him better.' Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Nowhere was this more so than in his private life. Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over four decades. To keep these relationships secret, he made use of tradecraft that he had learned as a spy: code names and cover stories, cut outs, safe houses and dead letter boxes. Such affairs introduced both...
John le Carré is still at the top more than half a century after The Spy Who Came in from the Cold became a worldwide bestseller. Written with exclusive access to le Carré, his personal archives, and many of the people closest to him, Adam Sisman's definitive biography is a highly readable, fascinating portrait of the life, times and espionage career that inspired a literary master. Always secretive about his background and Secret Service career (blocking one biography from publication in the 1990s, then choosing a biographer who abandoned the project), John le Carré (David Cornwell) has finally given his blessing to Adam Sisman, who has delivered a biography that reads like a novel. From...
Longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 'I embarrassed myself by uncontrollable guffaws ... This is a truly wonderful story' A. N. Wilson, Spectator 'A white-knuckle roller-coaster ride of fibs and frauds' Sunday Telegraph 'An utterly mad, and wholly delightful story of chicanery and fantasy' Simon Winchester One day in November 1958, the celebrated historian Hugh Trevor-Roper received a curious letter. It was an appeal for help, written on behalf of a student at Magdalen College, with the unlikely claim that he was being persecuted by the Bishop of Oxford. Curiosity piqued, Trevor-Roper agreed to a meeting. It was to be his first encounter with Robert Parkin Peters: plagiarist, b...
John le Carré was a defining writer of his time. This enthralling collection letters - written to readers, publishers, film-makers and actors, politicians and public figures - reveals the playfully intelligent and unfailingly eloquent man behind the penname. _____ 'The symbiosis of author and editor, father and son, has resulted in a brilliant book, le Carré's final masterpiece' 5*, Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph _____ A Private Spy spans seven decades and chronicles not only le Carré's own life but the turbulent times to which he was witness. Beginning with his 1940s childhood, it includes accounts of his National Service and his time at Oxford, and his days teaching the 'chinless, poin...
'A huge, fizzing omnium-gatherum of a book . . . marvellous' Daily Telegraph 'Witty, wise and elegant . . . a classic of history itself' The Spectator 'Grave and witty, suave yet pointed . . . full of energy' Hilary Mantel 'An enthralling investigation . . . consistently entertaining' The Times 'Epic . . . whatever Cohen writes about he writes about with brio' New Yorker Who writes the past? And how do the biases of storytellers - whether Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare or Simon Schama - influence our ideas about history today? Epic, authoritative and entertaining, Making History delves into the lives of those who have charted human history - professional historians, witnesses, novelists,...
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., John Hope Franklin, Daniel Boorstin, C. Vann Woodward, Edmund S. Morgan, Barbara Tuckman, Eric Hobsbawn, Hugh Trevor Roper, Lawrence Stone—aside from carrying the distinction as some of the most successful and well-respected historians of the twentieth century, these scholars found their lives and careers evolving amid some of the world's pivotal historical moments. Dubbed the World War II Generation, the twenty-two English and American historians chronicled by William Palmer grew up in the aftermath of World War I, went to college in the 1930s as the threats of the Great Depression, Hitler, and Communism loomed over them, saw their careers interrupted by World ...
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The extraordinary secret life of a great novelist, which his biographer could not publish while le Carre was alive.
The first book to explore the extraordinary story of the legendary friendship – and quarrel – between Wordsworth and Coleridge, two giants of English Romanticism.