Joe BakerYeah, sure, new books are great, but do you ever read old books?
Have you ever read ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, by John le Carré?
It’s his classic spy novel of betrayal and living double lives.
Everyone thinks 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' is a spy novel, but it's not really.
Well, yes, it is set in the world of spies and spying, that's certainly true, but it's not really about espionage at all.
We never escape from the language and idiom of the spy world, but that is only the habitat in which the characters live.
In truth, ‘Tinker, Tailor’ is about betrayal, about friendship and its failures.
It's a story about men, driven men, about the destructive power of ambition, and how it's easy for truth to hide inside.
And it's about the yearning for purpose and meaning when what we thought was true is shown to be false or empty.
It's said that the novel is le Carré's examination of his own life and experiences, the people he knew when he was a spy himself.
The 1950s and '60s saw the revelations that exposed the 'Cambridge Five' traitors, many of whom le Carré had known and worked with - people who themselves had deeply covered over all the things they were doing, things that undermined everything he stood for.