‘So there you are, Steff, now you have it. This wasn’t quite how I meant it to begin. ‘Steff, there’s something about me that your mother and I feel it’s time you knew.’ Exclusive extract from Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré An editing error resulted in the SIS being incorrectly described as MI5 in an earlier version. This article was amended on 9 September 2019. He gets to the nub of what people’s motivations are. The thing I find most exhilarating is the way he sees through people, not just in a political sense. He’s always been very good at human frailty. I think it’s ferocious about the political establishment, that’s where he puts real force,” she said. “It’s not bleak because Le Carré does believe in the young in this book … there’s a sort of faith in certain kinds of idealistic people, so I definitely don’t think it’s his bleakest book. In Agent Running in the Field, Nat plays badminton regularly with an introspective young man, Ed, who hates Brexit and Trump and, said Mount, is “seeking a way to fulfil his ideals”. But he has always been clear that “story and character must come first” in his novels – although he told David Hare in 2001: “I am now so angry that I have to exercise a good deal of restraint in order to produce a readable book.” Le Carré has long been a critic of Brexit, putting his name in May to an open letter in which authors urged readers to support the EU. There’s no looking away, he addresses the very current political crisis.” “It is incredibly prescient, and a very emotional book in terms of how connected he feels to the history of Britain and Europe. A man with his experience of the cold war could not walk away from the divisions in Britain, and between Britain and Europe … After the referendum, there was no choice for him except to look at where we are now,” she said. “The thing about Le Carré is that he’s always been as much at home in Europe as Britain. Le Carré’s editor at Viking, Mary Mount, said that the novelist “doesn’t pull his punches” when it comes to Johnson. As she picks away at his beliefs, Nat admits to serious reservations about the idea of England “as the mother of all democracies”, describing the country as in freefall, with “a minority Tory cabinet of 10th-raters … Labour no better. It shows Nat, a 47-year-old member of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), revealing his career choices to his daughter. Just as intrigue over Brexit is expected to reach peak intensity next month, Britain’s master spy novelist John le Carré will be releasing a new novel, set in 2018, where the UK is ruled by “a minority Tory cabinet of 10th-raters”, and the country’s new prime minister Boris Johnson is at that point merely “a pig-ignorant foreign secretary”.Īn early extract from Le Carré’s 25th novel, Agent Running in the Field, is published in Saturday’s Guardian.
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