Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Adam Sisman's definitive biography, published in 2015, provided a revealing portrait of this fascinating man. Yet some aspects of his subject remained hidden. Nowhere was this more so than in his private life. Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over five decades. To these relationships, he brought much of the tradecraft that he had learned as a spy. In trying to manage his biography, the novelist engaged in a succession of skirmishes with his biographer. While he could control what Sisman wrote about him in his lifetime, he accepted that the truth would eventually become known. Following his death in 2020, what had been withheld can now be revealed.

In this definitive biography, blessed by John le Carré himself, Adam Sisman reveals the man behind the bestselling persona. He probes his unusual upbringing, abandoned by his mother at the age of five and raised by his con man father (when not in prison), and explores his background in British intelligence, as well as his struggle to become a writer, and his personal life. Sisman has benefited from unfettered access to le Carré’s private archive, talked to the most important people in his life, and interviewed the man himself at length.