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Hello, today we're undercover in the world of secrets and spies.

We have a tip-off from a reliable source about an upcoming good read.

Josh Spiro uncovers the hidden lives of second-hand books,

and we start with the master of counter-espionage.

So, Carla's fireproof.

He can't be bought and he can't be beaten.

Not fireproof, because he's a fanatic.

I may have behaved like a soft dolt,

the very archetype of a flabby Western liberal,

but I'd rather be my kind of fool than his.

One day, that lack of moderation will be Carla's downfall.

Alec Guinness there is John LeCheret's best-known hero, George Smiley, from the 1970s BBC

adaptation of Tinker-Taylor Soldier Spy.

For many of my generation, Le Carrey's portrait of the Cold War remains our abiding

picture of that period, a cruel, crepuscular world where men in raincoats and the occasional

woman navigate their way through intricate levels of deception in an amoral abyss to keep the

communist threat at bay. How fascinating then to find in Adam Sisman's

comprehensive new biography that this was a reflection of the reality of John Le Carrey's life,

not just during his five years as an MI6 spook, but throughout a desperately sad childhood,

abandoned by his mother and farmed out to boarding school at five by his flamboyant

...