When a much-loved author dies, fans and publishers cling for a while to the hope that an undiscovered manuscript lurks in a drawer, promising a final echo of that familiar voice. So last week’s news that a collected volume of John le Carré’s letters will be published in November understandably sent a frisson through the literary world. Le Carré achieved the rare double of popular and critical acclaim, but his life offered as much intrigue as any of his plots: his fraudster father; the formative years in the intelligence services; the glittering literary and film career; the vocal political engagement. There’s also his longevity: the letters span the decades from his 1940s childhood to the days before his death in December 2020, aged 89. Few people could be as well placed to offer such a comprehensive first-hand account of recent history.
But that’s not why we’re so fascinated by the prospect of a writer’s private correspondence. In her 1940 essay The Humane Art, Virginia Woolf observes that “the letter writer is no surreptitious historian… he speaks not to the public at large but to the individual in private”. What we want from a collection of letters is a glimpse behind the curtain, a sense of who that person was among friends and family. Le Carré had already produced a memoir, but the letters promise a different kind of intimacy: a more dynamic sense of his personal relationships and the exchange of ideas.
