A new le Carré serialisation is starting on BBC1 on February 21 - The Night Manager. Profiles of two of the cast have appeared in the last couple of days (Tom Hollander, Olivia Coleman). Hugh Laurie plays the baddie, Tom Hiddleston (new to me) the eponymous hero. Should be good!
This was le Carré's first post-Cold War novel - chapter 21 of Adam Sisman's outstanding biography of le Carré (aka David Cornwell), which I've nearly finished, is entitled "Whatever are you going to write now?" which was the question he kept being asked after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He started the novel in 1989, before he'd written most of its predecessor The Secret Pilgrim (pub. 1991), but it was actually published in 1994. As it turned out, le Carré had no shortage of subjects in the post-Cold War world - Big Pharma, Ruanda, Chechnya/Ingushetia, rendition.....In fact three of his earlier novels had had nothing whatsoever to do with the Cold War, and one (A Small Town in Germany) very little.
As ever, le Carré's research was meticulous - he consulted his friend and neighbour Anthony Sampson who'd written about the arms trade, went to Miami gun fairs and spoke to Arms dealers in Panama, spent time with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (by then the arms and drugs trades were closely interlinked). Both Sydney Pollack and Stanley Kubrick ("who was obsessed with guns") considered filming it but didn't for various reasons.
This was le Carré's first post-Cold War novel - chapter 21 of Adam Sisman's outstanding biography of le Carré (aka David Cornwell), which I've nearly finished, is entitled "Whatever are you going to write now?" which was the question he kept being asked after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He started the novel in 1989, before he'd written most of its predecessor The Secret Pilgrim (pub. 1991), but it was actually published in 1994. As it turned out, le Carré had no shortage of subjects in the post-Cold War world - Big Pharma, Ruanda, Chechnya/Ingushetia, rendition.....In fact three of his earlier novels had had nothing whatsoever to do with the Cold War, and one (A Small Town in Germany) very little.
As ever, le Carré's research was meticulous - he consulted his friend and neighbour Anthony Sampson who'd written about the arms trade, went to Miami gun fairs and spoke to Arms dealers in Panama, spent time with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (by then the arms and drugs trades were closely interlinked). Both Sydney Pollack and Stanley Kubrick ("who was obsessed with guns") considered filming it but didn't for various reasons.
O but there is...
Hugh Laurie certainly doesn't have the menace or physical presence to be the wickedest man on earth (like Cali I cannot see him without thinking of the Prince Regent) Will probably watch next week just to see how it develops.
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