December 30, 2020
THERE ARE THREE THINGS LE CARRE WAS CERTAIN OF... (profanity alert):
What le Carré's people really think of Britain (John Lloyd, 12/17/20, CapX)
The encomiums for the late John le Carré from every corner of the British media, and from large parts of the American, bear witness to a nearly global enjoyment of immersion in the le Carré world. His people, drawn from the beginning of his writing career with great artistry, are unillusioned, courageous and patriotic, but with an undertow of bitterness that the country whose security they are sworn to protect may no longer be worth the sacrifices they nevertheless stoically make.It is that bitterness which, for this reader at least, keeps his novels on the shelf rather than becoming dog-eared with re-reading. His fiction was based very largely on a view of Britain - really, England - as remorselessly declining in its weight in the world, in honest and efficient government and in character. [...]Beneath the subtleties of character and plot of le Carré's novels is a banal insistence on degradation of a country which, since the last war, created and maintained a welfare state; retained and developed an uncorrupt and relatively efficient bureaucracy (and secret services); has risen to the responsibilities and challenges in the world forums like the UN, NATO and the G7; become among the most multicultural states in Europe and remained among the leaders in research and university scholarship and teaching. None of these are without a myriad of problems, some of which are now acute. But to see it, as the author and his characters do, as an exhausted lion led by venal donkeys, illuminates a strain of patrician loathing of those who cannot regard their country as a failed state.
...the first is that Britain was in permanent decline; the second that the U.S. was an unworthy successor to her leadership; the third that the West and the Soviets were morally equivalent. He could never forgive Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan personally, nor Brits and Americans generally, for proving his beliefs risible. He was a Bill Hardon who lived to see that his betrayal had served the side that was actually doomed.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 30, 2020 6:16 PM