The le Carré Cast - A podcast on John le Carré novels

This episode we look at another author to explore once you’ve finished looking at all of the works of le Carré. This time it is the granddaddy of thrillers, Eric Amber. We discuss how Ambler’s political worldview influenced his writing, themes in common with le Carré, and Plus we explore his early reading influences and […]

This episode we are back from a summer break with part two of our discussion of John le Carré’s 1979 novel Smiley’s People with returning guest Charles Beaumont, a former undercover MI6 operative and author of A Spy Alone and A Spy at War. We debate Connie Sachs repetitive return, talk Smiley and sex-clubs and […]

This episode we discuss John le Carré’s 1979 novel Smiley’s People with guest Charles Beaumont, a former undercover MI6 operative and author of A Spy Alone and A Spy at War. Beaumont describes first discovering le Carré at university through The Honorable Schoolboy and argues the Cold War novels still illuminate modern Russia’s state cruelty […]

This episode I’m joined by author David Goodman, author of A Reluctant Spy and the new sequel Solitary Agents. We talk about reading John le Carré as a kind of travelogue and why place matters so much in spy fiction. David shares how his dissertation on spy novels was a stepping stone to writing espionage […]

This episode I welcome back author and Bond expert Jeremy Duns to tackle the “le Carré or Fleming?” debate from a different angle: what they thought of each other. We talk generational differences (Fleming shaped by WWII, le Carré by Cold War service.) We read an Allen Dulles interview where Fleming praises The Spy Who […]