# The SBHonline Community Daily > Books, Movies, and TV >  >  John le Carré Has Not Mellowed With Age

## JEK

*John le Carré Has Not Mellowed With Age*

Nadav Kander for The New York TimesJohn le Carré, the 20th century's pre-eminent spy writer.
*By DWIGHT GARNER*

*Published: April 18, 2013* On a recent Saturday morning in February, two dozen or so scent hounds streamed through the streets of St. Buryan, a small village in Cornwall, England. Behind them drifted a loose formation of men and women perched atop well-groomed horses and wearing boots, breeches and hunting coats. As the fox hunt clopped through town, John le Carré, the pre-eminent spy writer of the 20th century, sipped from a paper cup of warm whiskey punch, doled out by a local pub to riders and spectators.



At 81, he remains an enviable specimen of humanity: tall, patrician, cleanlimbed, ruddy-complected. His white hair is floppy and well cut, so much so that the actor Ralph Fiennes, who starred in the 2005 film version of le Carrés novel The Constant Gardener, badgered him for the name of his barber.
Le Carré is not a hunter himself, but he nodded at the people he knew and mounted a casual and running defense of fox hunting, as if he were doing color commentary from the 18th hole at the Masters. Its an ancient part of the rural culture, he said. Its egalitarian in this area (some 300 miles west-southwest of London), not an upper-class diversion. Its also largely futile: an actual fox is rarely cornered. When one is, a trained eagle owl is brought in to kill it.
As the final horse strode past, le Carré swallowed the dregs of his punch and crumpled his cup. His eyebrows, so thatchy and animated that they seem ready to leap off his forehead and start nibbling the shrubbery, rose as he turned toward me, his blue eyes alight, and happily declared, At least they arent hunting that poor goddamn thing with drones.
*It is hard* to blame le Carré for being in a cheerful mood. As he enters his ninth decade, he is in the midst of a hardy late-career bloom, thanks in no small part to the critical and popular success of the 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, based on his 1974 cold-war espionage classic of the same name. Subtle, somber and intellectually dexterous, the movie, which featured Gary Oldman as le Carrés venerable MI6 master spy George Smiley, was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Oldman.









John le Carré Has Not Mellowed With Age

----------


## andynap

Love his stuff. Those eyebrows would drive me crazy tho- :)

----------


## amyb

Loved the description of the eyebrows.

----------


## Grey

I really enjoyed "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy".  Highly recommended.

----------


## tim

I've read them all.  _Single and Single_, one of his most obscure works, is my favorite.

----------

