The Pigeon Tunnel

In this memoir, John le Carré recounts episodes from his childhood, intelligence service, writing career and research journeys. He writes about his unreliable father, his years in diplomatic and secret work, and encounters that later informed his fiction.

The chapters move from Cold War Europe to meetings with politicians, intelligence officers, actors and people caught in conflict. Rather than offering a continuous autobiography, the book examines memory, invention and the experiences from which a novelist constructs stories.