The Daily Telegraph - Features
Welcome to the expanding universe of John le Carré
Two more series of The Night Manager are in the offing. The late spy novelist gave his blessing to those – but, asks Jake Kerridge, who’s pulling the strings now, and what does the future hold?
Over the past 60 years, the novels of John le Carré have been endlessly adapted, updated and occasionally mangled for film or TV. But the announcement that Tom Hiddleston is to reprise his role as hotelier-cum-secret-agent Jonathan Pine in two further seasons of The Night Manager heralds a new phase in le Carré’s on-screen career. The first series of The Night Manager was based on le Carré ‘s novel of 1993; now, for the first time, we will see his characters appearing in a screen production that is not based on his books.
Le Carré – real name David Cornwell – died in 2020, but his characters are proving as busy as ever in his absence. In addition to the resurrection of Pine on screen, le Carré’s son, the writer Nick Harkaway, is publishing a novel called Karla’s Choice in October: this will be set in 1963, after the events of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and will see his father’s most celebrated creation, George Smiley, once again tackling his nemesis, Soviet spymaster Karla.
We could be on the cusp of a Big Bang that sees the le Carré universe expand to infinite dimensions. As with Ian Fleming’s James Bond, once the books have been juiced dry there may be a procession of sequels by other hands, spin-offs for teenagers, and of course an interminable film franchise. Just as Sherlock Holmes defied his birthdate to tackle the Nazis in the Basil Rathbone films of the 1940s, we might all derive some comfort from a Smiley reboot that sees him applying that great brain to dealing with Putin and his spymasters in our own era.
It is too early to say whether le Carré will come to rival Fleming as a fertile source of spin-offs. But as Jonny Geller – formerly le Carré’s literary agent, now the agent for his estate – puts it, this year marks “a real leap of imagination” in how to approach le Carré’s legacy.
The responsibility for signing off on such miniseries lies with, as Geller puts it, “the newly configured John le Carré estate”. This is a family affair, headed by the author’s three surviving sons (in addition to Nick Harkaway, the son of his second marriage, le Carré had three sons by his first wife: Simon, Stephen and the late Tim). Nick’s wife Clare Cornwell, previously director of global operations at Amnesty International, has been managing director since last year. The family also owns The Ink Factory, the production company making The Night Manager in collaboration with the BBC and Amazon.
Literary estates have a reputation for resisting agents’ ideas for innovation – one thinks of the estates of Samuel Beckett and TS Eliot. But Geller and the Cornwell family are on the same page: “Oh yes, they’re very proactive and interested in trying new ideas.”
Such innovation is crucial, he
says, to avoid the slump in interest in a writer that often follows their death. “Whether it’s authorising a TV series or putting new covers on the books, you have to re-present a writer to a new generation, to show them why he is still relevant. And of course, he is: if you read about Russia in the papers, Jesus, it’s like he’s writing it.”
Geller insists that le Carré was keen for The Night Manager to carry on beyond the source material. “He was certainly interested and did agree to contribute some ideas.” (At the weekend, Tom Hiddleston confirmed to TV host Jimmy Kimmel that “he’s had a huge input”.) But, continues Geller, “he then focused on writing another novel, and his memoir [The Pigeon Tunnel] instead. He was not always interested in going back to his old work.”
Was he prescriptive when it came to adaptations of his work? “He knew the points where he didn’t want them to stray [from the books], so he would try to be involved. [But] sometimes he would just throw his hands up and say, ‘I’ve had enough, this film is uncontrollable’.”
Films are one thing, but one wonders whether le Carré would have approved of somebody else writing a George Smiley novel, son or no son. (Although it is true that le Carré bequeathed Harkaway the task of tidying up the manuscript of his final, posthumously published novel Silverview.) Either way, a new
Smiley novel was probably an inevitability.
Geller thinks people will be “pretty amazed” by Karla’s Choice: “David was such a distinctive writer and as somebody who knew him, it was so strange to hear his voice again. [Harkaway] has captured it remarkably.”
One can’t get away from the fact that “continuation” books and TV shows are good for swelling an estate’s coffers, but Geller insists that nothing would be greenlit “that wouldn’t enhance the reputation and readership of the author: nothing will be done for its own sake. [Le Carré] was a great literary figure who had important things to say. He embodied a set of values to do with engagement in the world, politics, standing up to power: there are things he did that [a continuation] would have to honour.”
It isn’t likely, then, that the le Carré estate will immediately follow in the footsteps of the Roald Dahl estate’s deal with Netflix, and hand over the rights to his whole back catalogue for an enormous sum (although one imagines Apple TV, currently establishing itself as the home of intelligent spy drama with Slow Horses, would welcome such an opportunity). “There’s no imminent plan for that,” says Geller.
Still, Geller promises that there will be more announcements about adaptations and continuations – TV, cinema and literary – in due course. We le Carré addicts will all have our own ideas about what we would like to see. Maybe somebody will finally be brave enough to tackle the ramblingly hypnotic and supposedly unfilmable The Honourable Schoolboy, the middle volume (in between Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People) in the Karla trilogy. And although le Carré’s most personal and touching novel A Perfect Spy – inspired by his relationship with his conman father Ronnie – was well-served by a 1987 miniseries starring Ray McAnally, a remake would introduce this masterpiece to a new generation.
But one direction filmmakers could go in is obvious. The point of George Smiley when we meet him in le Carré’s debut novel Call for the Dead (1961) is that he is well into middle age and seen as yesterday’s man by his Secret Service colleagues, although he will prove them spectacularly wrong. His adventurous early career is passed over in a few lines, including his four years during the Second World War spent undercover as “the accredited agent of a well-known Swiss small-arms manufacturer… travelling back and forth between Switzerland, Germany and Sweden. He had never guessed it was possible to be frightened for so long.”
There we have it: the young George Smiley, running around the continent instead of perched behind his desk – the Jonathan Pine of the 1940s.
‘The Night Manager’ begins filming later this year. ‘Karla’s Choice’ is published in October