Toby Manning is the author of John le Carré and the Cold War and Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music.
John le Carré was one of the great postwar novelists, converting the experience of Cold War espionage into brilliant works of literature. Yet he did so without really questioning the ruling doctrines of the Western camp or Britain’s role in it.
Country music became the sound of Richard Nixon’s coalition in the early 1970s — but it has always been too unruly to be fully co-opted by a reactionary agenda.
John le Carré was the Cold War’s finest novelist. He was no leftist, but Le Carré’s portrayals of the British security establishment offer an enduring insight into the mindset of the ruling class.