Although I’ve read many of his novels over the years and consider him a fine writer, I’ve never been one of those diehard fans that John Le Carré seemed to have in such large numbers. That has nothing to do with the fact that the spy story was his chosen genre. I’m a book snob in some respects, but not in that way. Le Carré was a brilliant novelist, not just a brilliant spy novelist, but I’ve never fully understood his appeal or the reverence he attracted.

Silverview was published after his death in December 2020. It will in some respects be familiar to anyone who has read one of his earlier books, set as it is among the cultured and well educated community of senior British spooks. It’s tightly plotted, meticulously constructed, and absorbing, just like all the Le Carré novels that came before it. But it also has something else – the feel, quite appropriately, of a valediction, a veteran’s farewell not just to the world of espionage, but to the craft of storytelling at which he had labored so skillfully for nearly sixty years.