Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
I’d seen the man on several occasions, seated in a corner of my local pub. I was clueless as to who he was. Then, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, I went to the Wells Tavern [in Hampstead] with a journalist, who knew the white-haired, conservatively dressed gentleman who never ate alone.
They engaged in a brief conversation, as I hovered awkwardly. “Who’s that?” I asked as we reached our table. “David Cornwell, otherwise known as John le Carré, with his wife Jane.” Later, as we left, introductions were made, with banter about the illegalities that followed the events of 11 September. Le Carré did not mince his words.
A few weeks later, a cream-coloured sealed envelope was posted through our letter box, my name in black ink with a big loopy “L” and firmly underlined. This was the first of dozens of handwritten letters from David across a decade and a half. He suggested we might have lunch at the pub, equidistant between our homes. “It wd be great to meet again and schmooze.”
For many years, this was how we communicated – letters delivered by hand, occasionally accompanied by an article, magazine or book. In later years we did email but that form never offered the anticipation or excitement of hand-delivery. “A lousy medium”, he called it. Then, every 18 months or so, a new manuscript in tow, he’d appear at the front door, arms extended, hundreds of pages in a box. “Usual procedure?” “Usual procedure.”
Each novel featured a horrendous lawyer; my role was to confirm that said person was depicted, beclothed, spoke and behaved as an abominable legal character might. This was only a few lines in hundreds of pages, but they were never marked with a little sticky or some such thing, so I would have to read through the entire manuscript, always enthralled (a process that informed my own writing style, picking up the techniques le Carré explained he liked to use to “reel in” the readers). Correspondence followed.
“No lawyer I’ve known calls their client ‘darling’,” I would explain. He defended his corner vigorously, insisting that he had, on some unspecified occasion, heard a solicitor use the word. By then I knew he liked to embellish, my scepticism inducing a giant grin as we tucked into the apple crumble prohibited by spousal diktat. The conversation would continue in written form. “As to ‘darlings’, of course they have all gone, to be replaced by a single tic that [the lawyer] has: calling her clients ‘heart’ now and then to remind them that she has one, even if it’s under heavy control.” Heart? Even more absurd, I suggested. He dug his heels in on that one.
The JLC envelopes would address many a subject, from the mundane to the very highest affairs of state. Each was treated with care. A letter might relate to a social engagement, or a local concern (“Let’s ponder it over a better hamburger than the [restaurant] is pushing these days, my last one tasted of cat”) or reflect on a gathering, such as our US election party in 2008 (“A night for the great-grandchildren, when the world actually became a better place, & a whole lot of the excuses for hatred were rendered redundant.”) There might be a reflection on an encounter (“I found Jon [Snow] terrifying – simply because I have for so long admired him, and his gift for inquisition”).
There was, too, quite a bit on the state of modern, lawless Britain, not least if I needed his help on an obscure point being researched. “I have written,” he assured, following a request to be introduced to a retired British spy, “asking whether they wd agree to talk to you off the record, for deep background on the ethics, culture and procedures of the two [intelligence] services.” This often came in with expressions of hope (“that somehow the country will rid itself of the truly wicked influence of Johnson and his gruesome companions”).
There was also much to stiffen my backbone, I now see, as he egged me on in the quest to expose an illegality or other act of horror that exercised us, and really put the boot in. “Excellent idea about war crimes, but how far do you dare go”, he instructed, making it clear he’d be at my back if I exercised too great a restraint.
Each envelope was a treasure, a connection to an antiquated means of communication, one that offered the special intimacy and personal connection of words written by hand on a reassuringly textured sheet of paper. To revisit the letters is to be exhilarated.
How fortunate to have had such a neighbour, one who wrote with a pen, old-style, then walked a couple of hundred yards and delivered it by hand. Every page is alive with energy, ideas and passions, each word a thrill to have and to hold. The precise, unique voice of le Carré (“please note that my pen name is in three words, & that the l is in lower case,” he instructed) is as alive, resonant and fabulous as it was on first being digested.
Philippe Sands’ latest book, on themes inspired by conversations with le Carré, is The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
