A Legacy of Spies
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  • Published: 7 September 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241981474
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download

A Legacy of Spies

Formats & editions
Paperback
14 May 2018
EBook
7 Sep 2017
Audiobook
7 Sep 2017
Hardback
1 Nov 2022
Audio CD
21 Sep 2017
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For the first time in over 30 years, John le Carré returns to the Cold War in this thrilling masterpiece

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.
  • Published: 7 September 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241981474
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
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About the author

John le Carré

John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novel Silverview was published in 2021.

portrait photo of John le Carré

Also by John le Carré

Karla's Choice
Call for the Dead
Silverview
The Pigeon Tunnel
A Private Spy
Agent Running in the Field
The Russia House
See all

Praise for A Legacy of Spies

He can communicate emotion, from sweating fear to despairing love, with terse and compassionate conviction. Above all, he can tell a tale. Formidable equipment for a rare and disturbing writer

Sunday Times

I have re-read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold over and over again since I first encountered it in my teens, just to remind myself how extraordinary a work of fiction can be

Malcolm Gladwell

He's one of those writers who will be read a century from now

Robert Harris

The best spy story I have ever read

Graham Greene on The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the 20th century in Britain. He will have charted our decline and recorded the nature of our bureaucracies like no one else has. He's in the first rank

Ian McEwan

A literary master for a generation

Observer