Sir, – Sadly, and in short order, two powerful communicators have left us. In the course of one of her final interviews Marian Finucane afforded listeners easy access to a humanitarian, robustly pro-European John le Carré.
Informative as the interview was, it’s unlikely that his world view is anywhere more insightfully on call than in his acceptance speech of the 2019 Olof Palme Laureate award. If his 2016 memoir reserves pride of place for father/son relationship, he communicates its impact in revealing, gracefully artistic prose: “though my mother’s name was Olive, my father called her Wiggly, rain or shine. Later, when technically I grew up, I, too, gave women silly nicknames in order to make them less formidable.” And of filial disaffection: “and when we buried the hatchet, we always remembered where we put it.” Of his next move?: “I have no god but landscape, no expectation of death but extinction, walking the Cornish cliffs I am overcome with gratitude for my existence”. Extinction? I think not. Philip Roth has described the autobiographical A Perfect Spy as “the best English novel since the war.” – Yours, etc,
OWEN MORTON,
Sutton, Dublin 13.