Le Carre’s genius for hard work

‘The more identities a man has, the more they express the man they conceal.’ For me, that sentence indicates why John Le Carré is one of Britain’s greatest living writers. It’s elegant, profound and accessible. It comes from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and that story of betrayals is contained in that one sentence. In fact, it expresses concisely the broad theme of the Smiley books.

I wonder how long it took Le Carré to sculpt that sentence. How many emendations? How many different combinations and sequences? How much effort is needed to fashion something so precise?

By his own admission, Le Carré is an exhaustive self-editor. Writing is the labour of rewriting and his books are the result of a protracted game of draft and counter-draft. He announced today that he has given his entire literary archive, every notepad and scrap of paper, to the Bodleian library. The Today programme ran a fascinating short feature on the exhibit this morning, urging those who are interested to go there and see Le Carré’s painstaking method for themselves.