Ultimately it's about love ... this is a very emotional book. John le Carré had an utterly heartbreaking childhood ... This is the best biography of 2015 - a rare achievement that invites rereading (Edward Wilson Independent)Compendious and compelling...Sisman is excellent at the nuts and bolts of writing and of being published...it must be difficult to write the life of a man who is still very much with us, and in the public eye, no matter how much liberty the biographer has been given to tell the story, warts and all. Sisman - a very fine and astute biographer - has done an excellent, not to say exemplary, job under the circumstances ... it is impossible to imagine this Life being bettered (William Boyd New Statesman)This is the way to do it. Why this admirably balanced, patiently detailed biography of John le Carré is not on the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist beats me ... Sisman does full justice to [the] rawness at the heart of le Carré (David Sexton Evening Standard)A perfect biography (Robert Harris on An Honourable Englishman)A wonderfully absorbing book (Alan Bennett on An Honourable Englishman)By miles the best biography I have read this year (Max Hastings on An Honourable Englishman)Admirable (Financial Times)Balanced, focused and compelling (Economist)The spy novelist's life is explored and explained with immaculate care and attention to detail (Sunday Times)This book is testament to Sisman's skill and perseverance . With his excellent grasp of the wider history, Sisman is good at anchoring Cornwell in this shadowy environment, as he guides his readers through the models for various characters . Sisman brings admirable clarity to what could have been a meander in a wilderness of mirrors (Andrew Lycett Spectator)

Over half a century since The Spy Who came in from the Cold made John le Carré a worldwide, bestselling sensation, David Cornwell, the man behind the pseudonym, remains an enigma. He has consistently quarried his life for his writing, and his novels seem to offer tantalizing glimpses of their author - but in the narrative of his life fact and fiction have become intertwined, and little is really known of one of the world's most successful writers.

In Cornwell's lonely childhood Adam Sisman uncovers the origins of the themes of love and abandonment which have dominated le Carré's fiction: the departure of his mother when he was five, followed by 'sixteen hugless years' in the dubious care of his father, a man of energy and charm, a serial seducer and conman who hid the Bentleys in the trees when the bailiffs came calling - a 'totally incomprehensible father' who could 'put a hand on your shoulder and the other in your pocket, both gestures equally sincere'. And in Cornwell's adult life - from recruitment by both MI5 and MI6, through marriage and family life, to his emergence as the master of the spy novel - Sisman explores the idea of espionage and its significance in human terms; the extent to which betrayal is acceptable in exchange for love; and the endless need for forgiveness, especially from oneself.

Written with exclusive access to David Cornwell himself, to his private archive and to the most important people in his life - family, friends, enemies, intelligence ex-colleagues and ex-lovers - and featuring a wealth of previously unseen photographic material, Adam Sisman's extraordinarily insightful and constantly revealing biography brings in from the cold a man whose own life has been as complex and confounding and filled with treachery as any of his novels. 'I'm a liar,' Cornwell has written. 'Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as a novelist.'

This is the definitive biography of a major writer, described by Ian McEwan as 'perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the twentieth century in Britain'.