The Smiley Collection Boxset

Description

Presenting three decades of the singular George Smiley A pursuit to solve a murder; a satire on the Etonian ruling class; an espionage thriller of plots and counter-plots; a devilish drama behind East German lines; a deadly hunt for a Soviet mole; a high-risk operation in South East Asia; a final showdown between spymasters; and a survey of the shattered moral landscape of the Cold War. Featuring the quintessentially English spymaster George Smiley, these are the eight gripping, globetrotting classics which defined John le Carre's oeuvre and earned him a reputation as one of the world's best living novelists, now in A format with a retro cover look created by the award-winning UK designer David Pearson. Including Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley's People and The Secret Pilgrim.

John le Carre was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carre widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020. His posthumous novel Silverview was published in 2021.