John le Carré Missed Nothing

Save this story for later. The passing of John le Carré, who has died at the age of eighty-nine, leaves not so much a gap in the market as a hollow space in the world. It is unlikely to be filled. There will not be another writer of his ilk, largely because the ilk was him. On the page—and, by all accounts, in person, though he was an accomplished mimic and would have made a delightful actor—he sounded like himself and nobody else. It was only between hard covers, you might say, that he was happy for his cover to be blown: