Blair and Brown the ‘Scottish pigs’
Author Le Carré’s undiplomatic verdict on Labour
THE characters in his famous spy novels are the embodiment of secrecy and discretion.
But it seems author John Le Carré shows little of the subtle diplomacy depicted in his books when it comes to putting his own views to paper.
A scathing letter written by the 86year-old writer to a friend has emerged, in which he denounces Tony Blair as a ‘bad Scottish piglet’ and Gordon Brown as ‘an unhappy Scottish hog’.
The letter goes on to criticise the Labour governments of Blair and Brown for their spending ‘excess’ which left the country ‘broke’.
The message was sent by Mr Le Carré to an American friend, Willard J Morse Jr, on August 20, 2010, three months after Labour lost the general election and was replaced by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition.
Mr Morse, an obstetrician from Maine, died recently and the letter has emerged for sale from his estate, with an estimated selling price of £700.
The hand-written, single page letter reads: ‘And hooray, we’re free, the country’s broke and we’ll all have to go back out to work or die in the street, which will do us good after the excess of the previous wastrel government that was for the people, by the people, except it was run by one bad Scottish piglet (Blair) and one unhappy Scottish hog (Brown), who emptied the piggy bank for the people while they were about it. ‘Oh, and Iraq and Afghanistan.’ The author, whose real name is David Cornwell, was even less optimistic about the incoming coalition government in 2010.
He wrote: ‘The Etonians have taken back the ship with the help of some B-list inexperienced liberals who will evaporate in their own hot air before long, leaving the shop to a ragbag of ivy league Tories, born-again PR men, sexists, anti-Europeans, nostalgists and eco-ostriches.’
Mr Le Carré, who spent his early life in the British intelligence service, is most famous for novels such as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
The latter was made into a major BBC television series starring Alec Guinness and a 2011 film starring Gary Oldman. More recently, his 1993 novel The Night Manager was adapted by the BBC as a six-part series, starring Tom Hiddleston.
In the letter, he also makes reference to attempts by Hollywood actor Brad Pitt, who he refers to as ‘Bradley’, to adapt The Night Manager for the big screen.
He writes: ‘In Oct I enter my 80th year. In Oct, also, Gary Oldman and Colin Firth and a bunch of thesp celebs star in a motion picture remake of Tinker Tailor, starting on my birthday, directed by a Swede in a hat called Tomas Alfredson (‘Let The Right One In’). Meanwhile my Uncle Bradley (I daren’t call him Brad, we haven’t been introduced) Pitt, is supposed to be producing The Night Manager for the spring, too.
‘And I, thank heaven, will be away from all of it, writing the Ur-novel that calls loudly from the thickets. So life is not dull.’
The ‘Ur-novel’ he mentions is thought to be his 2013 book A Delicate Truth.
The auction will take place in Maine tomorrow.