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LOT 786:
LE CARRE JOHN: (1931-2020) British author of espionage novels. A.L.S., David, two pages, 4to, St Bur
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Sold for: €500
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Estimated price :
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LE CARRE JOHN: (1931-2020) British author of espionage novels. A.L.S., David, two pages, 4to, St Bur
‘And I am writing a new book’
LE CARRE JOHN: (1931-2020) British author of espionage novels. A.L.S., David, two pages, 4to, St Buryan, Penzance, Cornwall, 27th March 2020, to Doris, on his personal printed David Cornwell stationery. Le Carre thanks his correspondent for their letter and continues 'I too am very old (88) but your daydream of me writing away in Cornwall (rather than London) is happily true, even if I feel something of the survivor's guilt when I hear of the confinement & subsequent privations of my family & friends in locked down cities. This afternoon, after a mornings work that my wife is now wrestling with (I write by hand and she, poor woman, types it all out) I went for a lovely walk over the field in perfect sunshine, and felt that I had seldom been more content. And I am writing a new book, although at this stage it is rather shapeless & tentative, and more crossings out than confident prose. We came here, not to escape the virus, but to shake off the persistent pressures of publishers, movie-makers and the rest of the pack who somehow succeed in getting in the way of writing. I recently received a coveted award and took twelve of my family with me to Stockholm for the ceremony. Somehow the hullaballoo followed me home, so we bolted - just in time, as it turns out - and are self-isolated, which is how it's always been down here anyway, except for our dear housekeeper, whom we've had to send away on full pay until the crisis is past'. A poignant letter of interesting content written just three days after the United Kingdom went into lockdown in an effort to contain Covid-19. VG
The book to which Le Carre refers is most likely to have been Silverview, his 26th and final novel which was published posthumously in October 2021.
Le Carre died in the Royal Cornwell Hospital, Truro, in December 2020, aged 89, following a fall at his home. His second wife, Valerie Jane Eustace, a book editor, died in February 2021, two months after her husband, aged 82.
