William Boyd remembers an exemplar of the ultimate literary professional, tirelessly writing at the top of his game well into his 80s
I can still remember the strange thrill I experienced on first reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré’s third novel, published in 1963, and the one that made his name and brought him lasting international success. I must have been in my early 20s, I suppose, but I can vividly recall that feeling of privileged access that the book gave to you – as if you were being let into a private club, a clandestine world for initiates only. It was a bafflingly difficult novel, also, and that added to the engagement. When I came to read more le Carré I discovered that you, the reader, were expected to pay attention. Only that way could you participate in the slow and tortuous decryption of what was going to be revealed as the narrative unspooled. The concentrated act of reading became an almost physical pleasure. That self-conscious, deliberate, teasing difficulty about his novels was – for me, certainly, and I suspect for almost all of his readers – his particular trademark. Reading a le Carré novel became an act of collaboration between reader and author: what the author hinted at or alluded to and what the reader then had to deduce. It proved a most beguiling connection and he manipulated it with enormous skill.
Related: John le Carré remembered by writers and friends: ‘He always had a naughty twinkle in the eye’
