This text serves as an addendum to Sisman’s 2015 biography, focusing on aspects that the subject, David Cornwell, did not wish to be disclosed during his lifetime.
David Cornwell, better known by his pseudonym John le Carré, was a man of many qualities – diligent, educated, creative, humorous, and remarkably generous, particularly towards the women he pursued while married to either of his two wives. Despite recognizing his own shortcomings, he attributed them to his father’s reckless behavior and his mother’s abandonment during his childhood. This left him with a deep-seated distrust of women, even though he himself was not particularly trustworthy.
Sisman suggests that Cornwell’s frequent affairs were not merely distractions, but rather, they fueled his prolific writing. He illustrates how the theme of betrayal permeated both Cornwell’s personal life and his literary work. Regardless of his reliance on his wives, he needed a new muse for each novel he wrote. Given le Carré’s extensive bibliography, this implies a significant number of women.
Among the three affairs that Sisman details, only Cornwell’s long-term relationship with researcher Sue Dawson substantiates this claim, as parallels between Cornwell’s suspicious behavior and le Carré’s fascination with espionage are evident throughout. Sisman also links Cornwell’s professional decline to his inability to attract new muses for his increasingly predictable novels.
Sisman revisits the “hidden annex” of information that Cornwell’s son had previously advised him to exclude from his initial biography. This revisit is made more intriguing by Sisman’s frank discussion of the ethical considerations surrounding his revealing postscript, and its implications for Cornwell, his numerous lovers, and the nature of biographical writing as a whole.
