David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

John le Carré’s London of exiles is alive and well

(Photo: iStock)

‘I’m an Englishman born and bred, almost.’ So says Karim Amir, protagonist of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia. If Karim, and by proxy Kureishi, is a funny sort of Englishman – ‘born and bred’ but not quite – then so was John le Carré, albeit in a slightly different way.

Le Carré, or to give him his real name David Cornwell, died a week ago and the obits have been flowing ever since. They generally, and correctly, observe that his true subject was never spies but England (and it was always England rather than Britain). Born to a con-man father who sent him to a public school where he never felt comfortable, and from which he ran away from before attending Oxford, le Carré’s life is the story of an English Gentleman who never quite was. His literary world is accordingly one of misfits with old school ties; cads with impeccable vowels expounding in gentleman’s clubs.

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