Delicate Truths

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 Cold War’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 Helsinki 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 Moscow. 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. Berlin. 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 Soviet Union. 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 Perestroika, 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.

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