“I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and i...” — John le Carre Quote

I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.

The Occupy movement flared and then seemed to fizzle out - until it re-emerged in the form of Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign and in the far-left surge that made Jeremy Corbyn leader of the British Labour Party.

In London, I discovered a peculiar building by Holland Park where the globe was shrunk to fit a British perspective, but which had a library with Sri Lankan books I had never seen before.

With most British actors, it's amazing. I think they start with the character on the outside and work in.

It is a British legacy that we have such a strict hierarchy that we can't even write a letter to our PM.