John le Carré passed away

"Who do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs?" -The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

He belongs in that small pantheon of genre writers who transcend their chosen subject and ascend into the high literary. Tolkien with Fantasy. Clarke with Sci-Fi. Chandler with Crime. Lovecraft with the Supernatural.

Some of the old BBC adaptations are extant via YouTube ;)

Highly highly recommend the old BBC series (Granada television?) of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People", starring the inimitable Sir Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Some of it is on YouTube.

To get a taste of the high quality, search for "The Turning of Grigoriev" on YouTube.

Probably showing my age I find announcing someone's death on twitter disrespectful.

Here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/13/john-le-carre-...

We have reached peak-COVID, now an announced death is accompanied by "( not COVID related)".

I have never read anything by him, still RIP.