26 Saturday 24 October 2015 The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph Saturday 24 October 2015 27 BOOKS

offer anything new about it in his the incompetence and mischief- forthcoming memoir. “But I intend making of the CIA). During in the fullness of time, if I outlive Building a bridge over the Reykjavik summit of 1986, Delicate him, which is by no means certain, Reagan told Gorbachev that his to write a fuller version of his life critics back home were “kicking after his death, and that will be [his] brains out”. The bulwark very useful material.” Sisman is the Iron Curtain against these forces was Shultz, only 61 but his comment about le the dogged American hero of Carré outliving him is more than a Service’s book, who realised truths joke: the man is still an incredible more quickly than anyone else life force. And according to Sisman, the opportunities presented that’s down to his unhappy by Gorbachev’s 1985 rise to childhood, in particular his power. The change Gorbachev mother, Olive, who left the family An account of the ’s close reveals the made was dramatic. The years home when he was five and broke of stagnation under Brezhnev off contact. steady hand of both leaders. By Duncan White had led to the USSR being run “You may say to yourself, ‘Why by a paranoid gerontocracy that on earth is he still writing at 84?’ was, as Service puts it, “locked He’s still driven. He doesn’t relax. THE END OF THE into a condition of collective He has the occasional holiday, but COLD WAR: 1985-1991 denial”. First Yuri Andropov, basically he’s working as hard as he by Robert Service then Konstantin Chernenko ever has. He doesn’t need to, of died, having served just over a course. He’s proved everything he 562PP, MACMILLAN, £25, year as leader. So decrepit was needs to prove. He’s obviously got EBOOK £11.51 the leadership in these years that enough money. So what’s fuelling the general secretary’s villa in him? His anger is still burning Foros had been equipped with The man we know as John le Carré bright in him, his anger at being an escalator to the beach. abandoned.” ÌÌÌÌÌ is as slippery as his Cold War spies, n May 28 1987, a hen came the sprightly ut it is his father, Ronnie, a skinny 19-year-old T54-year-old Gorbachev. his biographer tells Jake Kerridge Bnotorious con man, who has German took off He had known the loomed largest in le Carré’s from in his Soviet political and economic ohn le Carré is one which le Carré was channelling life, and at times Sisman’s book O Cessna and made system was headed for disaster as of the great English Smiley when being interviewed. resembles an Evelyn Waugh novel for . Flying early as 1975. He was careful mysteries, like “I often found that I’d formulated in the way that the larger-than-life into Soviet airspace, Mathias Rust about when and where he Stonehenge or the some kind of biographical idea Ronnie will pop up long into his was tracked for a while by a MiG expressed his strong opinions J Princes in the Tower. about David, and then started son’s adulthood, in a variety of fighter, but carried on undaunted, and had a meteoric rise through “I’m a liar,” he says. edging towards it in our bizarre circumstances. “David was flying low in a bid to avoid radar. the party. With the dynamic “Born to lying, bred to it, trained conversation, only to realise that appalled by his father but also Once over the Soviet capital, he Shevardnadze at his side, he to it by an industry that lies David had thought of it long before adored him, and he fears becoming used a map to find his way to Red prepared to reform domestic and

for a living, practised in it as me and had already, as it were, like his father. His father was a Square, and took two low passes REUTERS foreign policy radically. With the a novelist.” moved a piece into place to stem my in an attempt to clear a space clock ticking on the disastrous One of the reasons that Adam advance. It’s good that it’s not too for a landing amid the gathering on fighting each other through Shared goal: the Soviet economy, he knew he had Sisman’s new biography has been cosy a relationship. I’ve tried to At 84, he’s proved crowd before touching down on a proxy wars in the Third World, Gorbachevs with to act fast and reduce military so eagerly awaited is that it remind myself that although I very everything he neighbouring bridge. He chatted they were now fighting among the Reagans at spending. The war in Afghanistan promised, with its subject’s help, much enjoy David’s company, we’re to the bemused Muscovites in themselves; the battles were the Reagan had proved a disaster, and he was to unpick the contradictions and not friends, and I’ve got to keep my needs to prove, awkward English; he said he taking place within Washington ranch near Santa desperate to avoid being dragged obfuscations in le Carré’s own cold dispassionate gaze on him and wanted to “build an imaginary and Moscow, with reformers Barbara in 1992 into another arms race by accounts of his life. not be lulled by his charm.” but his anger is bridge” across the Iron Curtain. He pitted against reactionaries. Reagan’s Star Wars project. The Le Carré may be ready to tell Sisman stresses that this is not still burning bright asked if he might speak to Mikhail Service, a professor of Russian the truth. He turned 84 on an authorised biography, but there Gorbachev. The KGB had other history at Oxford, is known for Monday, and like many people in won’t be any of the squabbles that ideas and locked him up. his thumping great biographies For all Reagan’s old age seems to have been have bedevilled the publication of charming and in a sense beguiling Gorbachev, it turns out, was not of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, so folksy charm, he visited by a new compulsion to Jonathan Bate’s recent life of Ted character, but he was also a even in Moscow, but at a meeting it is unsurprising that in The End set the record straight. When I Hughes. When Sisman wrote to psychopath who would cheat old of Warsaw Pact leaders in East of the Cold War he brings to life was possessed of interviewed him a couple of years him proposing an outline for the ladies out of their life savings. . When he was informed that the “big four” who he believes ago and thanked him at the end book, le Carré, who had read and “I think one of the interesting an amateur aviator had penetrated did most to bring the conflict a titanium core for answering my questions so admired his biography of Trevor- things that surprised me about what was supposed to be the most to an end: on the American side fully, he replied: “Yes, I didn’t Roper, agreed to cooperate. “He David, that shouldn’t surprise you sophisticated air defence system Ronald Reagan and his secretary fallout from Chernobyl further mean to.” has given me access to his private really if you read the books, is the in the world, he told the gathered of state George Shultz; on the convinced him of the need to Sisman, the author of highly papers and also introductions to all extent to which he feels alienated leaders it constituted a grave Soviet side Gorbachev and work with Reagan on nuclear praised biographies of the the important people in his life, from English society. His public humiliation for the . Shevardnadze. Service’s analysis disarmament. historians AJP Taylor and Hugh including members of his family, face is urbane, apparently Inwardly, though, he was jubilant: is never reductive: at every stage, With this as the set-up, Service Trevor-Roper among others, has his wife and children, and also old completely self-possessed. He Rust had given him leverage over with every crisis, he shows the then traces the unravelling of spent 50 hours interviewing friends – and old enemies.” went to public school, went to the hardliners in the military inextricable interdependence of the Cold War in all its Byzantine David Cornwell, the man better But le Carré has not found it an Oxford, got a first-class degree, who opposed his reforms. Eduard these four influential figures in intricacy, drawing on an

known to the world as John le easy process. Sisman recalls IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY PICTURE CRANE/LIFE RALPH served in intelligence services. Shevardnadze, minister of foreign pursuit of their shared goal. exhaustive range of archival Carré, for this book. It is a long, arriving for the first time at You’d think he was entirely affairs and Gorbachev’s partner Reagan’s role as peacemaker materials from both sides. The full and revealing work, written le Carré’s home in Cornwall, where as much on his side as I should servant and had never been with his subject is Cornwell’s Coming in from comfortable, but in fact there’s a in , was so delighted is the most counterintuitive. evidence shows how, at almost in blessedly readable prose, and his wife, Jane, showed him into the be, and he has said, ‘Why do you involved in spying, the more personal life. The biography deals the cold: David strong sense of alienation from the that he celebrated by getting He won the presidency as a every single juncture, it would makes a three-dimensional converted garage where his papers believe other people and not people imagined that the opposite in detail with le Carré’s affair Cornwell in a institutions of British society, and I stuck into a bottle of brandy in his strident anti-communist with have been easier to give up on figure of a subject who can come were kept. “I’d been there about an me?’ And I’ve said I’ve just tried must be true and that in fact he’d (during his first marriage) with pedestrian think that perhaps stems from his hotel room. a hawkish attitude to foreign rapprochement and backslide across as something of a hour looking at all these boxes, and to present the truth as it seems been a master spy. So he’s kind of Susan, the wife of his friend James tunnel in rackety childhood and his sense of The irony was that for all policy, and yet he was into mutual hostility. Service superman – champion skier, I was aware of a shadow in the door to me, and actually usually I do had it both ways for a long time.” Kennaway, the author of Tunes of , 1964; not really being what his father Rust’s sentimental nonsense committed to complete nuclear prefers to draw on diaries, letters lady-killer, spy, record-breaking and there was David with his believe him, but I know, and he Why is he still reluctant to talk Glory – a liaison that inspired le below left, his was trying to make him become by about imaginary peace bridges, disarmament. Horrified that the and minutes of meetings than on novelist and finally grand old spectacles on the end of his nose, would know and has admitted, that about his work for MI6? “He says Carré’s only non-espionage novel, biographer, sending him to public school, his escapade did help to pave the US had no defence against nuclear the many self-serving memoirs man of the Left. Sisman’s and before I could say hello or memory is a great deceiver and he promised people, agents who The Naive and Sentimental Lover Adam Sisman coming from a different class way for major treaties on nuclear attack, he was also committed dedicated to the period. Having account of Cornwell’s espionage anything he said, ‘It’s very that often we reconstruct the worked for him, that he wouldn’t (1971), which was savaged by the background.” disarmament between the United to building a missile-intercept this stuff in the raw makes for a work is particularly good, odd to have you here, past.” reveal their names, and he thinks critics, and hints at numerous He shares this sense of being an States and the USSR. At a meeting system in space (“Star Wars”). The riveting read. although necessarily far from Adam, poking around On the other hand, Sisman he should keep that promise even other affairs. “David’s infidelities “insider-outsider” with Kim of the Politburo on May 30, the simplicity of Reagan’s position Sure, keeping track of the comprehensive – Cornwell will inside my mind.’” thinks that it has suited le though those agents may be dead. have created a duality and a Philby, says Sisman, but where defence minister Sergei Sokolov on nukes suited his stubborn bewildering number of Soviet not be drawn on much of his Le Carré has read Carré to mislead They may have been spying on tension that became a necessary Philby took to treachery, Cornwell was forced to resign, and many temperament. For all his folksy bureaucrats is enough to make work for MI6, particularly those the book to check that it interviewers. “David thinks I people who were close to them, drug for his writing,” Sisman writes turned to literature. “I think that sackings followed. It was a heavy charm and lack of intellectual anyone reach for the vodka, but parts that, one suspects, most does not violate his major think he is more conscious who may be still close to them. I can in his book. “From an early stage in edginess, that sense of being inside blow to Gorbachev’s opponents. sophistication, he had survived Service, for all his attention to resembled a John le Carré novel. stipulation: that in this process than he think of one person in Germany their relationship Jane [his second John le Carré: the and understanding how society Rust, meanwhile, spent two an assassination attempt and was the granular detail, has that rare In le Carré’s first book, Call for Sisman “should admits to. I feel it’s who I’m pretty certain that David wife] has suffered David’s Biography by works but at the same time not months in prison before possessed, in Service’s phrase, of a gift in historians: generating the Dead (1961), there is a pay due regard to served his purpose was spying on. I think that it would extramarital adventures, and tried Adam Sisman is being seduced by it, feeds into his being released in a diplomatic “titanium core”. narrative tension about memorable passage in which the sensitivities of to be vague about be deeply painful and embarrassing to protect him from their published by work, so he can observe with a goodwill gesture. That toughness helped him events of which we already George Smiley outlines his living persons”. his past, and for if that came out, and I’m sure there consequences.” Did le Carré offer Bloomsbury at dispassionate eye the absurdities of As Robert Service tells us in his not only to hold his line when he know the outcome. He takes patented techniques for But he has not people to are other examples. But of course his own comments on the subject? £25. To order Whitehall, for example.” authoritative new account of the ran into public difficulties – the To order this a story so frequently warped outwitting interrogators. When I given it his misinterpret him. that’s also part of the le Carré “It’s one of those areas he didn’t a copy from This may be true or not, but Cold War endgame, the Rust Affair Iran-Contra affair foremost – but book from the by triumphalist hindsight meet Sisman over coffee near his wholehearted The more he mystique, not to reveal everything.” really want to talk about,” says the Telegraph probably nobody will ever come was just one bizarre incident in also in the unremitting fight with Telegraph for and reminds us just how home in Bristol, the first thing I approval. “I think protested that he One area where Sisman has had Sisman. for £20, call closer than Sisman has to cracking a larger pattern. No longer were the hardliners on the American £20, call 0844 precarious was the path towards want to know is the extent to he thinks I’m not was a simple civil to tread carefully in discussions Sisman doubts that le Carré will 0844 871 1515 the great le Carré enigma. these two superpowers focused political Right (to say nothing of 871 1515 “improbable peace”.