The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life

Written by John le Carré

Narrated by John le Carré

DON’T MISS THE PIGEON TUNNEL DOCUMENTARY—IN SELECT THEATERS AND STREAMING ON AppleTV+ OCTOBER 20TH!

“Recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur—by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

The New York Times bestselling memoir from John le Carré, the legendary author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; and The Night Manager, now an Emmy-nominated television series starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. 

From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth; visiting Rwanda’s museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide; celebrating New Year’s Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command; interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev; listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov; meeting with two former heads of the KGB; watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People; or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.

Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer’s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9780735210059

John le Carré

John le Carré was born in 1931. 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 Honorable Schoolboy; and Smiley’s People. His novels include The Constant Gardner, The Little Drummer Girl, A Perfect Spy, The Russia House, Our Game, The Tailor of Panama, and Single & Single. He lives in Cornwall, United Kingdom.

Reviews for The Pigeon Tunnel

[fmclellan-29530 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating tales from a full life as a spy and a writer and much more. Throughly enjoyable. I am going to hang onto my copy as I now read my way through all of his books.

[thisisstephenbetts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Probably only 5* for Le Carré completists, but I really enjoyed this. One to re-read.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This loose memoir was very uneven for me - some events held my interest, but most did not, which is the opposite of what I expected from an ex-MI5 agent and renowned author.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Stories drawn from the life of John le Carre, I found them less engaging than his fiction.

[pgmcc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from my life" is exactly what it says in the subtitle, stories from the life of John Le Carré, or David Cornwell if we are to use his real name, the only name he responded to.

I came to this book as someone who greatly admires Cornwell’s books and articles, has watched the majority of the screen adaptations of his novels, and who has enjoyed the few interviews he has given and that I have watched or read. You might claim I was biased in a way that means I was bound to enjoy this book. I always say, “There is no harm being biased when you are right*.”

Biased or not, this book did not give me any evidence that my admiration for David Cornwell and his works has been misplaced.

The structure of this book supports dipping in and out. There are many short sections describing incidents of note, or describing a character who provided the inspiration for one of Cornwell’s characters or who was a significant person in their own right and whom Cornwell encountered in his life, either incidentally or through his efforts to do research. I enjoyed the whole book and found the bite-size snippets for the author’s life to be intriguing and informative.

While Cornwell did not describe or discuss any of his activities while working in MI5 and MI6, the incidents he did discuss left me with a sense of a parallel world of intrigue and secrecy that most people do not see in their everyday life. There was a sense of everything you know not necessarily being real. I was reminded of Umberto Eco’s stories that, to me, were mostly about showing how the world we know, the history in the books, and the actions of governments and public figures, are not really the world that is around us.

David Cornwell’s father, Ronnie, was a conman, serial seducer, and a real charmer. The longest, most intense and most harrowing part of the book to read was, “Son of the author’s father”. In this thirty-five page chapter, Cornwell describes incidents that shed light on his relationship with his father and his mother, but predominantly his father. It was the one part of the book where one could get a sense of real angst and emotion about the matter being discussed. He describes how he had investigators seek out evidence to verify the veracity of his own memories. This chapter struck me as very personal.

If someone asked me to recommend a single section from this book, and I had to give a one section answer, I would propose the Introduction. The Introduction is twelve pages full of interesting detail and background, but also a warning. Cornwell explains that in describing the incidents he has been true to his memory, but goes on to say that his writing career has involved using memory and imagination, that his previous occupation as a spy in MI5 and MI6 was, by its nature, prone to deception, and that he was brought up by a father whose whole life was devoted to confidence tricks. In this context he questions the concept of “pure memory” and begs the question of how accurate his own memory might be.

If that hypothetical person were to ask me to recommend a single section from this book, my real response would be, “Read the whole book”.

Would I recommend this book?
Most definitely.

Who would I recommend it to?
Anyone.

Would I read more works by this author?
Certainly.

Did this book inspire me in any way?
I am inspired to read the Sisman biography of David Cornwell and to read the few Le Carré novels I have not yet reached.


*”Right” as in “correct”; not “Right” as in “politics”.

[anaraguard · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although many of the individual anecdotes and accounts were interesting--particularly to fans of LeCarre--the book as a whole felt disjointed to me. It lacked a narrative arc which made it difficult to stick with it. I wanted much more of Chapter 33, about the fascinating Ronnie, and could have done with a little less of some of the more political sections.

[waldhaus1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I got more insight into the author from this autobiographical fragment than from the biography I recently read. Perhaps naively I felt I got to know him and gained an understanding of his background. The events are presented as interesting stories.

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyed these stories a lot until about half way through - when they began to bore me - and then there were definitely sections which should have been edited out. Glad he left the stories about his father to last as the enjoyment rocketed up again. I don't really care how much actual truth there is in them - I suspect quite a lot - because a bit like a novel being imaginary, there is a deeper truth that shines (from the best bits at least).
So the 3-star is an average - a mix of 2, 3 and 4 stars.

[stuartellis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a set of articles, depicting incidents in the life of le Carré. They are, of course, brilliantly written: entertaining, perceptive, and cut with a quiet sense of good humour. There are a few stories from his career as a junior intelligence officer, but most are from his life as a novelist, which turns out to be truly amazing.

It seems that le Carré loved to travel to the places that he wrote about, and people liked to talk to him. There's a huge cast of characters here from the various worlds that he touched: politics, espionage, journalism, media and the arts. He met some of the most famous and important people of the 20th Century, as well as many less famous but fascinating people. A name check from this book includes: Margaret Thatcher, Yasser Arafat, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Burton, Alec Guinness, Fritz Lang, Andrei Sakharov, a head of MI6 and two heads of the KGB. The not-famous people are an even more extraordinary mix, including a great Czech actor who defected to become a doctor, a French woman who rescued orphans from war zones, the American journalist who may also have been a Nazi-hunting vigilante, and le Carré's larger-than-life con-man father.

I really did not want this book to end: the stories that we get are clearly only a small slice of his adventures.

[addunn3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting - and historically fascinating - collection from a gifted author. Well worth the read.

[tmph_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderfully personal. Pure le Carré writing. Utterly fascinating.

[wearyhobo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What an odd delight.

[maggieflo_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

David Cornwell, aka John Le Carre tells stories in short chapters about people he has met over the years as an attaché at the British embassy in Bonn and as a well respected author of espionage novels. It is only slightly autobiographical as the focus is on the personality in question rather than on the author. His encounters include politicians, film stars, movie producers and other authors. Some of these end up as characters in his books. His most interesting memoir is about his father, Ronnie Caldwell, who was a well known con man, serial adulterer, charmer, gambler, rogue and rake.

[dgrachel · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this in a combination of print and audiobook read by the author. I loved le Carre's narration and found the stories within to be fascinating. The end was a bit of a surprise, and I turned the page expecting more. So, the way it ended was a bit disappointing. I enjoyed the details of events and people who inspired some of his novels. A great read for fans.

[nhlsecord · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting stories of le Carre's life and his travels to do research for his novels, as well as his experiences while having movies made from his books. All through the book there are hints of his own difficult life which are explained in an excellent ending. This would make a great movie!

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A nice collection of short autobiographical pieces from the established master of the spy-story. No big revelations, of course - he's still as professionally tight-lipped as ever about what was involved in the "bit of this and that" he did for MI5 and MI6 in his time - but a lot of charming little anecdotes about his experiences as a working novelist, mostly cast in the classic English self-deprecatory mould where the name-dropping is always balanced by some kind of embarrassment - an invitation to No. 10 from Mrs Thatcher, when it turns out that the real guest of honour (the recently-elected Ruud Lubbers) has never heard of him; meetings with Arafat who treats him with great affection one day and has forgotten him the next; encounters with famous film directors who go on not to make films of his books; leaders who wrongly assume that he's an expert they can consult about espionage and security; hotel concierges who don't know him but still remember his conman father with affection, and so on.

All written with his characteristic economy and eye for jargon and dialogue, and very entertaining.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Le Carre tells some interesting and entertaining stories, and he reveals something about the research he does on his books. I was interested in many of his experiences, but his most affecting stories concern his search for his mother and his attempt to capture his father on the page.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Parts of this memoir are fascinating, while other parts drag. I think it would be different if I knew more history of British espionage. It is abundantly clear that John Lecarre has led an absolutely fascinating life!

[sigmundfraud · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John Le Carré is just as the title suggests, stories. They appear chronologically. Some have to do with his personal life and some to do with his books. He began as a spy but he said he was a writer before he was a spy. The stories are haphazard but interesting nonetheless. If you are interested in Le Carre I recommend this book. He also has a new George Smiley book just published that may interest you as well.

[booksfordinner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As fun as a memoir can be. Jumping all over the place. Little time is spent on his childhood, except to state at regular intervals how ridiculous it, and his father, was. The chapters on Richard Burton and Le Carre's father are worth the price of admission alone.

[bibliovermis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is both an interesting memoir of the world as it was and a prescient observation of the world that is. Like many memoirs, it's not entirely cohesive and has some meandering chapters, especially toward the end.

[gmmartz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John Le Carre is in my personal pantheon of great novelists. 'The Pigeon Tunnel', a collection of autobiographical stories describing his background, writing methods, wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and adventures in building his novels, was a pleasure to experience for a fan like me.

The writing in The Pigeon Tunnel is great, a little 'breezier' than his novels but that's to be expected. It's first rate. The stories are the draw. Not only was his pre-writing career fascinating, but the wide range of people he's interacted with over his life and the funny, exciting, and dangerous actions he writes about are incredible. He ought to make a book out of some of them.... wait, he did!

What surprised me the most was the care LeCarre takes in crafting his stories, the education he undertakes to understand the countries, people, politics, and situations he writes about. I'm not a writer so I'm not sure how prevalent some of his techniques are among authors, but I was blown away by how meticulous and unique his approach is to his work.

LeCarre (which is just a pen name, by the way) seems to be the self-deprecating sort so I think he'd consider this book a trifle among the greats he's authored, but it was a joy for me to experience. If you're a fan, I highly recommend it.

[bobbieharv · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I decided to tag this wonderful book as non-fiction rather than a memoir because it is really a series of autobiographical essays, a style I found very rewarding. He is a wonderful writer and I've read most of his novels. Here he is intelligent, wry, a canny observer, and ultimately reserved: all characteristics of a good spy. I just loved it.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful book. For one, it s a pleasure to read LeCarre agajn. Second, although I read some of these
pieces in the New Yorker or the Times Magazine, most of it was new to me. Third, I had no idea, despite having read his biography recently, how much research he puts into his writing. All told, the book is a story of how the author goes about creating characters and the various run ins he has with American and other movie directors and writers.It does not take anything away from his bio.

[faradaydon_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Engrossing!

[antao-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“It strikes me now that everything that happened later in life was the consequence of that one impulsive adolescent decision to get out of England by the fastest available route and embrace the German muse as a substitute mother.”

Schiller’s “Die Deutsche Muse” epitomizes what I call the German Soul (taken from my own copy of the “Schiller Sämmtliche Werke” :

Kein Augustisch Alter blühte,
Keines Medicäers Güte
Lächelte der deutschen Kunst;
Sie ward nicht gepflegt vom Ruhme,
Sie entfaltete die Blume
Nicht am Strahl der Fürstengunst.
Von dem größten deutschen Sohne,
Von des großen Friedrich Throne
Ging sie schutzlos, ungeehrt.
Rühmend darf's der Deutsche sagen,
Höher darf das Herz ihm schlagen:
Selbst erschuf er sich den Werth.
Darum steigt in höherm Bogen,
Darum strömt in vollern Wogen
Deutscher Barden Hochgesang;
Und in eigner Fülle schwellend
Und aus Herzens Tiefe quellend,
Spottet er der Regeln Zwang

More than 30 years ago I also went into the world of spy fiction. It’s impossible to forget that. It happened in the worst day of my life; I was roaming my city, Lisbon, without rhyme or reason, when I found shelter in cinema Quarteto, one of my favourite movie theatres at the time. There was a spy movie cycle on. What did I watch? A lot of movies based on Le Carré’s movies. I was hooked for life. I went into the theatre and I was Alex Lamas, George Smiley, Karla, etc. for a while. I went into the obscure jungle of the Cold War with my eyes wide shut. It didn’t take long for them to open though. And they stayed open.

If you're into German Language and Literature, Genre Fiction, going into personal stuff, and outstanding literature, read the rest of the review on my blog.

[msf59 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“…We all reinvent our pasts…but writers are in a class of their own. Even when they know the truth, it’s never enough for them.”

“I’m a liar…born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist.”

David Cornwell, aka John Le Carre, is no armchair author. He has lived the life and in this beautifully written memoir, by one of the best spy novelists of our time, he takes the reader on a journey, that touches down in many historical and personal locales, over six decades. His years, working for MI6, the British intelligence service, working in Hollywood, interviewing terrorists and meeting luminaries like, Arafat, Richard Burton, Andrei Sakharov and Stanley Kubrick. His warm friendship with Alec Guinness, aka George Smiley. And those are just snippets, of what is in these glorious pages but what really stands out, for me, is the profile of his father, who was a true con-man and rapscallion.

I think I have only read about six of his books and mostly the earlier classic stuff. This has inspired me to pick him back up again, especially his later work.

Le Carre also narrates the audiobook and does a wonderful job, with wit and nuance. The perfect storyteller. Do yourself a big favor and track this one down.

[darwin.8u · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"if you were reporting on human pain, you had a duty to share it"
- John le Carré, quoting a dictum of Graham Greene, in 'The Pigeon Tunnel"

First, a disclosure, I was given this book by Viking Books. These types of offers I typically refuse. I don't like feeling under obligation to review or even read a book just because it was given to me. I might do it for friends, but even then, I am VERY picky about what I read. I have thousands of unread books and thousands of others I that are on my radar to read. I usually feel a bit like Melville's Bartleby, aroused only to the level of wanting to reply "I would prefer not to.". But this is John le Carré. Anyone who knows me knows I'VE been pimping John le Carré books for years. My goal is to be a le Carré completest by the end of next year (I still have yet to read The Night Manager, The Tailor of Panama, Absolute Friends, Our Game, or The Naive and Sentimental Lover) but there is a sadness that comes with finishing, with having no country left to visit or no book left to read. I, however, own them all. Often multiple copies. So, how could I refuse a free le Carré? Also, so I wouldn't feel completely like I was writing for free books, I also went out to purchase the Audiobook so I could listen to le Carré talk about his own life.

Surprisingly, this is le le Carré's first memoir. That both feels a bit strange and a bit right. First, le Carré is a master at timing and also understands when is the proper point to introduce a character and how much to show. John le Carré, the pen name for David Cornwell, is often reluctant to do interviews (their is a bit about that in this book) and is a bit publicity shy. He isn't Pynchon or Salinger for sure, but the energy of pimping his stuff and his reluctance sometimes to delve into the narrative of his own life (he worked for awhile for both MI-5 and MI-6) and his relationship with his father seems to be something he is often reluctant to discuss. Ironically, these two issues feed his fiction heavily. His father and his relationship with his father's ghost seems to push through most of his fiction. So, too, obviously does le Carré time as David Cornwell the spy. There is a thin, unbleached muslin shroud between fact and fiction (le Carré talks about his in this book). Perhaps le Carré's greatest book, A Perfect Spy, which Philip Roth (yes, that Philip F'ing Roth) once called "the best English novel since the War" was grown out of David Cornwell's relationship with his own father.

The memoir itself is filled with anecdotes and loosely goes from past to present, but also breaks time's arrow to describe certain relationships with certain people or movies made of his books. I loved especially the parts of this book where le Carré writes about Graham Greene and the craft of writing. I knew le Carré got around, but after reading the memoir, I can safely say he belongs with George Orwell, Graham Greene, William T. Vollmann, Paul Theroux family of adventure writers whose fiction is informed from the trenches. They don't just know where some bodies are actually buried, they may have seen the corpse AND the murder.

So, why only four stars? Because I'm judging this book against his best fiction. This is a fun memoir and a very good le Carré. Again, going back to how this is his first memoir, I wonder why now? I hope he is not done with fiction. I hope this is not him saying, I'm done. He is in his 80s, and after he is done, I'm not sure what to do. We have been waiting for 400 years for another playwright to equal Shakespeare. How many centuries will we have to wait for another le Carré. Dear GOD, I fear too long.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John le Carré is widely accepted as perhaps the greatest writer of spy fiction. I would, however, go further and suggest that he is, quite simply, one of the greatest novelists in any genre. His novels display an acute understanding of the human condition, and his characters are always so finely drawn that the reader feels he knows them.

The Pigeon Tunnel is not a conventional autobiography but, rather, a selection of memoirs and includes among its highlights le Carré’s pen portraits of Richard Burton (who so memorably brought the tortured Alec Leamas to the big screen in the film of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) and Alec Guinness (who I can’t avoid seeing whenever I reread any of the stories featuring George Smiley), together with a sad encounter with Fritz Lang. The longest individual piece focuses on Ronnie, the author’s errant father, whose fictional counterpart enlivened the largely autobiographical novel, A Perfect Spy.

The pieces are all written with le Carré’s glorious prose which though immediately recognisable remains inimitable. There are some self-deprecating notes about his time in the intelligence world, though, predictably, we learn few actual details. He also tells us nothing about his time as a teacher at Eton – indeed this spell of his life, about which I would love to learn more, is only referred to a couple of times, and then only in passing. We do learn a little about the mechanics of his writing – like Iris Murdoch, his novels are written by hand rather than typed – and we are given a slight insight into the research he undertakes for his books, though most of his work remains a mystery. As with Anthony Powell’s marvellous Dance to the Music of Time sequence, in which the reader learns next to nothing about the author even after reading twelves volumes of a novel so clearly based upon the writer’s life, we don’t emerge from this book knowing very much more about John le Carré. That doesn’t matter, though. The book is enchanting and beguiling in its own right, and a joy to read.