HOW TO MURDER A LITERARY REPUTATION

‘Well, that’s le Carre off the reading list then’ wrote Giles Coren in The Times two week ago.  The influential columnist (and son of Alan Coren, who delighted earlier generations in the now defunct Punch magazine) was referring to the recently published tell-all memoir by John le Carre’s mistress, which provided enough salacious detail to put Coren off le Carre for good.

Not even a full time, long-term mistress; the author of The Secret Heart claims that she and the famed spy novelist were intimate for several months, split into two phases with a 14 year interval.  She also paints a portrait of le Carre as a serious adulterer.

So bloody what ?  We judge this particular book by its cover and if it’s got le Carre’s name on it, it’s likely to be a winner.  What the hell has the author’s morals got to do with it, or his sexual peccadilloes for that matter, which were best left in the privacy of his darkened bedroom until this wretched woman dragged them out into the spotlight for the world to view.

So listen here Suleika Dawson or whatever the hell your real name is, since you are so familiar with the master’s work you know he examined one subject very closely, and that was betrayal.  And when the man was not merely down, but dead, and unable to defend himself, you betrayed him in the worst possible way for the meanest of motives – to garner publicity for yourself.  You are so willing to destroy a great writer’s reputation to boost your own, and I assure you that you will fail.  Fifty years from now they will still rank him as the creator of the modern espionage novel and the undisputed master craftsman of that genre.  And if your name come up at all, they will likely ask, ‘Suleika who ?’