Did you know that "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" by a certain David Cromwell (aka John Le Carré) sold between 12-15 million physical copies? That's before Richard Burton took on the mantle of "Lemeas" from that novel and long before Sir Alec Guinness took on the part of the forensic super-spy "George Smiley" in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and that gives us quite an indication as the phenomenal success of this writer who basically bares his soul here in a one-to-one with Errol Morris. Spurred on only sparingly by the director, we are left with what is an succinct and informative retrospective on the life of a man who might not have seemed obviously destined for literary greatness. We start with his childhood where he was largely brought up by his con-man father (after his mother got fed up of the crooks and the mistresses and fled when he was five) and follows his education through Oxford, his recruitment into and ultimately boredom of the the British Intelligence community before turning his hand to bringing all of this experience to life in over twenty published novels. This isn't a treatise on how to write a thriller. It's an enjoyably structured lesson on how a little bit of experience, an understanding of human nature and a vidid imagination can create works of fiction that enthral and captivate. He delivers this with candour, humour, a tiny bit of self-deprecation but most notably - truthfulness. You need to have your thinking cap on, too. He uses language eruditely and in a considered fashion that I could listen to all day. You won't learn much about how to write a spy story, but you will learn something of this fascinating and engaging human being. It's an Apple TV production so might get only a limited cinema release (though the BBC seem to have supplied quite a bit of archive, so perhaps they secured a tx as a quid pro quo?) and it's most definitely worth a watch if you are remotely interested in the genre, in writing - or in just listening to an interesting man.
