What does John Le Carre have to hide?

The reclusive spy novelist is finally letting a biographer loose on the skeletons in his past, reports Zoe Brennan in The Telegraph, 2 April, 2011

Reclusive: legendary spy novelist John Le Carre. Photo: JONATHAN PLAYER/REX FEATURESBy
It could have been a scene straight out of a John le Carré spy novel. Graham Lord, a competent tabloid hack, had been touting his synopsis for a book around London publishers. The document was confidential – it contained salacious details about a famous author’s personal life. It plotted out a thrilling romp through his mistresses, wives, loves and losses – and his work for the secret service. Nothing would be left to the imagination, a publisher would be mad to turn the book down.

Within days, threatening letters began landing on Lord’s doormat. Then a writ for libel was served. It turned out that the subject of the book, John le Carré himself, did not want an unauthorised biography written.

In the end, it would not be written, for le Carré’s lawyers hounded this small-time writer into submission.

Contacted this week by The Daily Telegraph in the Caribbean, where he now lives, Lord says: “It was a disaster all round. This was 18 years ago. I have no idea how he saw the synopsis, it was an internal document. To this day I have not been able to find out how that happened.
“The torment went on for three or four months. I had letters from lawyers arriving every day. It was probably the worst time of my life.”

Asked exactly what the esteemed author objected to, Lord falters. “I don’t dare,” he says quietly. “I just don’t dare go through it again. Sorry not to be more helpful – but it is self-preservation. Unfortunately most of the people he was close to are dead now, although I am sure there is no significance in that.
"All I can say is that he is obviously very attracted to women.”

For his part, le Carré said of his bid to stop publication: “I didn’t want him gumshoeing around my children, my ex-mistresses, my everything.”

Now, however, the very stories le Carré tried to suppress are about to be told. The 79-year-old espionage writer has given his blessing to academic Adam Sisman to write his life story.

Sisman, biographer of the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, will be given full access to le Carré’s personal archive. The book is expected to be published in 2014, the 50th anniversary of le Carré’s greatest work, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.

The historian and author of Fatherland, Robert Harris, whom le Carré – real name David Cornwell – had previously chosen as his biographer, has put his claim to the writer’s records aside.
“I wrote to David more than 20 years ago,” Harris says, “and he agreed to help me if I agreed not to publish until after his death.
“I interviewed his wife, and his first wife, and got hold of 400 or more letters. I signed a contract with Random House to produce a biography and wrote 30,000 words of notes. I devoted months to it.


“I got distracted by writing my own novels, so I am happy for Adam to write it. I might do a more impressionistic portrait, but I have a legal agreement with David that anything I know is not to be divulged before his death.”


Full story at The Telegraph.