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Hello and welcome to the Spectators Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

And this week, I'm joined in the week of John Le Carre's death by one of his

oldest friends, Nicholas Shakespeare, the novelist whose most recent book is The Sandpit,

a spy story of which I think Le Carre would have proved. Nicholas, what do you think needs to be said

about Le Carre now that hasn't been said in the flood of outpourings

that have come out around his death? Well, I think in the flash flood of outpourings, almost everything's been said.

Probably what can't be said often enough is how he was our kind of senior figure in literature for the last 30 years.

I remember when speaking to Graham Green about whom I would often talk with Le Carrey, I asked

Graham Green what he felt when Evelyn War died. And Green said he felt as if his commanding officer was dead.

And certainly LeCarray felt that about Graham Green.

And he had described Green as carrying virtually alone

the torch of English literature.

And he himself, I felt, replaced Green.

When Green died, it was inevitable that LeCarray just dovetailed into that position.

And many of LeCarray's books, Taylor of Panama, homages to Green.

Green himself had said that the spy who came from the Cole was one of the best novels he'd ever read. And I think for me, what hasn't possibly been said enough, is how much LeCarray is like Green and behaved towards those under him like Green. I mean, for me, David's death, my commanding officer has

died. And so many of the qualities he admired in Green, he embodied in his own works. There was the

primacy of story tale. He loved Green for what he called the search for moral values coupled with an adventure story. And he

always made the adventure story in the tradition of Buckin and Somerset Maw and Green, a kind of

primary priority. Then there was his engagement with the wider world outside England. For him, it was

Germany. A bit like Green and Brighton Rock. You could open any one of David Commer's novels and

...