Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Other George Smiley Stories, by John Le Carre

The great ambivalent spy writer.

I listened to the audiobook, in John Le Carre's voice, which is incredible. I personally think there are only two great stories in this collection: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and I wish I'd only listened to those two. But I'm glad I listened to those two.

One of my big obesssions in life is the idea that you can, in fact, live your life wrong: I don't think it's a coincidence that one of my all-time favourite novels, Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, is one of the few works of literature I've ever encountered that takes that idea seriously.  But my main thought coming out of the Smiley novels is that there's a kind of mirror-image phenomenon to this, which is living your life right and being punished for it: that you can do the 100% right thing and spend decades of your life paying the price for it before (in the best case!) being proved right. The background to the Le Carre novels is the bananas true story of Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five, and the people who were right about the Five – possibly including Le Carre? – basically lost their careers over it,

What must it feel like, to have lived like that? To have been right about something important for a very long time? You'll never get the years back, and you'll never get even 1% of the credit you deserve.