Reading Le Carre.

Let me tell you a story about a young girl of colour, named Leonie. Leonie was born to a working class dysfunctional family, in an inner-city area of an industrial town in England. She was quite an unremarkable girl, quiet, introspective, mediocre in many ways, but one thing Leonie loved to do was read. Whilst her boisterous brothers and sisters played and argued and fought, Leonie would often be found alone in her room, reading late into the night- much to the detriment of her eyesight, under the narrow beams of fading moonlight long after her parents had decreed “lights out!”. Hence, she earned the moniker “Leonie the loner”.

One day in her teenage years, Leonie came across a book entitled “Smiley’s people” written by an author she had never heard of before: John Le Carre. It was a random choice, not least because it was the last in a trilogy, but because it was an odd pairing of author and reader, as John Le Carre was an Oxford graduate, raised in an upper-class family in the delightful British countryside and once held a distinguished career in Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Mi6.

Their lives were poles apart, yet through this book he spoke to her.

Through this book he introduced her to the principal character: legendary master spy George Smiley, whose quiet and unassuming ways- a loner too much like herself- endeared himself to a nation-wide readership.

As she followed the protagonist’s journey and woven narration of spy craft throughout the globe , she absorbed fanciful descriptions of Russian émigrés and Parisian streets and she imagined a world other than the concrete jungle she was used to and developed a longing to join in on the adventure. And as she learnt new words such as “lugubrious” and “languorous” she wasn’t just expanding her vocabulary and horizons, she was expanding her mind. And as she developed a love for all of John Le Carre’s works, reading beguiling tales of bravery, secrecy and old-fashioned loyalty and betrayal – and learning astute observations such as “the desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world” - she expanded her character.

Years later, when she too learnt a foreign language and travelled the world (not as a spy but an Esol teacher) she would often think back to discoloured pages of that book and in waves of nostalgia, reread it. She would always appreciate the avuncular tones of a John Le Carre novel and have a special fondness for good old George Smiley and his merry band of British spies from a bygone era.

Sadly, John Le Carre passed away last month - and these characters along with him- and if Leonie could meet him in the afterlife, or in her imagination, she would have a drink with him and she would thank him.

Even though John Le Care had long left the intelligence business and instead spent many decades as a prolific author, writing best-selling novels such as “The Constant Gardner” and “The Night Manager” , she would still like to thank him very much, for his service.