A Legacy of Spies

Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, has retired to his family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London are to be scrutinised by a generation with no memory of the Cold War. Somebody must be made to pay for innocent blood once spilt in the name of the greater good.

Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own story, John le Carré has given us a novel of superb and enduring quality.

'Vintage le Carré. Immensely clever, breathtaking. Really, not since The Spy Who Came in from the Cold has le Carré exercised his gift as a storyteller so powerfully and to such thrilling effect'

The Guardian

'Remarkable. It gives the reader, at long last, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that have been missing for 54 years. Like wine, le Carré's writing has got richer with age'

The Times

'Utterly engrossing and perfectly pitched. There is only one le Carré. Eloquent, subtle, sublimely paced'

The Daily Mail

'Splendid, fast-paced, riveting'

Andrew Marr, The Sunday Times

'Readers familiar with le Carré will recognize allusions everywhere; those who aren’t won’t be left out, given the power of the storytelling and le Carré’s inimitable prose. He can convey a character in a sentence, land an emotional insight in the smallest phrase—and demolish an ideology in a paragraph.'

Publishers Weekly

Christoph

Hans-Dieter Mundt

Bunny

Laura

Control

George Smiley

Peter Guillam

Karl Riemeck

Doris Quinz

Alec Leamas

Brittany, France