John le Carre's final novel, which his son Nick Cornwell tells us in an afterword sat in a drawer for some time, is in some ways in line with his other late novels - for example, A Legacy of Spies - in that it involves old hands revisiting a past they have tried hard to escape. In other ways it harks back to his very first novels such as , say, A Murder of Quality; the scale is confined, largely to a small, unspecified seaside town in East Anglia. To this backwater Julian Lawndsley has fled from his successful City career to open a bookshop. Here he meets (or is approached by) the amiable, slightly eccentric Edward Avon, long since retired from some sort of development role in Eastern Europe. Edward's wife Deborah is dying. She is, apparently, a famous Arabist who worked for some sort of think tank. It's all very vague. Oddly, Edward claims to have known Julian's father at public school. Julian's father was a churchman who renounced God and went on a well-reported dive into debauchery, disgrace, and ultimately penury. Edward claims to have got in touch with his old friend, offering assistance. Julian still has his father's collection of letters. There isn't one from Edward Avon, although there is one which might offer a clue.
Meanwhile Stewart Proctor, Head of Domestic Security, receives an important letter at a safe house in London. Letters are very old school and thus are the preferred means of communication among old hands. Edward, for example, persuades Julian to deliver one by hand to a very beautiful old lady whom he meets at the Everyman Cinema in Belsize Park. He buys the stationery which allows her to write a sealed reply. On his return to his bookshop he finds a written invitation to supper from Deborah Avon.
I have to say, the whole thing is wonderfully well done. I have enjoyed several of le Carre's later novels but Silverview may well be the best of them. I especially liked the last line, from the Avons' daughter Lily to Julian: "And that's the last secret I'll keep from you." How classy is that?
Silverview was the novel chosen wisely by none other than Barack Obama who showed his class yet again by including John le Carré's Silverview in his favourite books. Maybe next year he should include Bill Fairclough's epic fact based spy novel Beyond Enkription in TheBurlingtonFiles series. Why? After all, Bill's MI6 handler knew Kim Philby and Oleg Gordievsky, but Kim Philby was the one who ended John le Carré's MI6 career. No wonder John le Carré turned down Bill Fairclough's offer in 2014 to collaborate on the action packed factual Burlington Files series! David Cornwell responded along the lines of "Why should I? I've got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?" An expected but realistic response from a famous expert in passive fiction who failed to visit theburlingtonfiles.org!
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