The Pigeon Tunnel

Stories from My Life

By: John le Carré

Narrated by: John le Carré

Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times best-selling memoir from John le Carré, the legendary author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and The Night Manager, now an Emmy-nominated television series starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie.

From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels.

Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth; visiting Rwanda’s museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide; celebrating New Year’s Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command; interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev; listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov; meeting with two former heads of the KGB; watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People; or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.

Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer’s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.

©2016 John le Carré (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

One of the NP99: National Post’s best books of 2016

“Recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur—by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“An illuminating, self-effacing and pleasurable inquiry into le Carré’s creative process, offering globe-spanning thrills of a different, but no less captivating kind than those associated with the novels.”—USA Today

“[Le Carré] is a polished raconteur, with an actor’s protean self-presentation, gifts of pace and timing, aptitude for entrances and exits.”—Wall Street Journal

Intensely interesting

He keeps you interested through the entire read. Excellent narration and he does very well with the accents and characters. A well lived life.

I would read anything by John le Carre.

Better still, this excellent book of family reminiscences, chance meetings, and profiles of notable men and women is by David Cornwall himself.

The absolute best

I've read all LeCarre's novels and this tops every one of them. Can't wait to listen again!

Extraordinary...

An extraordinary life told by an incredibly talented storyteller. The surprise was what a talented mimic and actor the author is. It's an incredibly compelling account of history, both on the global and the individual scale

To a le Carré devotee this is it.

There are no superlatives to do this justice. Now that I have finished I will start listening again. It's that good.

A privilege and a delight to listen to!

If you like Le Carrés's books as much as I do (I've read them all), this one is an absolute must. Mr. Cornwell's rendering of his experiences is not only an extraordanary piece of introspection, but a rendering of profound thought, in a superb performance which nobody could possibly match, not even Alec Guiness. After this I will re-read his books with a different perspective. I thank him for this masterpiece.

Fascinating, beautifully narrated.

Not just any author can self narrate, this one is a pleasure to listen to, beginning to end.
I’ve not yet read any of his novels but look forward to doing so very much, thanks to his exceptional storytelling.
The many history lessons were fascinating and often heartbreaking.
Highly recommended even if you aren’t already a John Le Carré fan.

Incredible!

Even if you've never read his novels, this is an incredible biography by a true legend. The stories are so well detailed and witnessed that you wish you knew David back then.

Informative and entertaining

I got more insight into the author from this autobiographical fragment than from the biography I recently read. Perhaps naively I felt I got to know him and gained an understanding of his background. The events are presented as interesting stories.

Good look in on the writer life and view of his works

I suppose the hope that more of the book be spent on his childhood with his con artist dad. For that one should probably just go to A Perfect Spy.
Most of the book was intriguing as he reveals where some of his characters came from and some of the way that he and his work move through the world, both the physical and media world.
Be aware that some of the stories come off as brushes with greatness stories of early manhood, but they have their own self-deprecating charms that make them worthwhile.
I was most happy that it was the Author reading the book as I have always loved hearing his patrician voice and smatterings of impressions in interviews.