Errol Morris’s conversation with the late David Cornwell in “ The Pigeon Tunnel ” is fascinating even without the filmmaking flourishes.
Cornwell, better known by his pen name John le Carré, was the spy-turned-novelist whose tales of espionage and betrayal defined an era, gave literary heft to a genre and inspired numerous adaptations. And here, Morris challenges him to reflect on his unconventional childhood — his con-man father, his mother who left him at 5 never to return — on through his time in the secret services and beyond. You hear how he quite literally began life on the run, how he learned to be a “little spy” from quite a young age, how his father loomed so large in his imagination and how untrustworthy his own memory even turned out to be.
