LE CARRÉ, John.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Looking-Glass War. First edition, signed by the author on the title page. Disturbed by the public's romanticization of his previous novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), le Carré wrote this satire of a fictional British intelligence agency in an attempt to deconstruct the mythos surrounding MI6 in the post-war era.Le Carré described his differing approach in the introduction to the 2013 edition of the novel: "This time, cost what it will, I'll describe a Secret Service that is really not very good at all; that is eking out its wartime glory; that is feeding itself on Little England fantasies; is isolated, directionless, overprotected and destined ultimately to destroy itself". Though this angle was appreciated in America and the rest of Europe, in Britain it was overwhelmingly criticised. Le Carré interpreted this as resulting from spies being "a protected species in our national psychology... Never mind how many times they trip over their cloaks and leave their daggers on the train to Tonbridge, the spies can do no wrong" (New Yorker).

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