Ten top John le Carré novels

John le Carré has published over twenty novels. In October 2008 on BBC Four he told Mark Lawson that his best novels were The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Tailor of Panama, and The Constant Gardener.

For the Telegraph, Jon Stock named his ten favorite le Carré novels, including:

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974)

The first in le Carré’s Karla trilogy, Tinker Tailor beats to the insidious rhythm of real-life traitor Kim Philby, whom the author still despises to this day. George Smiley takes centre stage in his fifth outing, charged with hunting down a Soviet mole codenamed Gerald. Le Carré had to rewrite Smiley’s timeline to ensure he wasn’t too old for the job. Gary Oldman was good as Smiley in the new film version, but was he better than Alec Guinness?

Read about another novel on Stock's list.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is on John Mullan's list of ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature and among Jeffrey Archer's top ten romans-fleuves, Robert Baer's five best books on being a spy and Stella Rimington's six favorite secret agent novels; Peter Millar includes it among John le Carré's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue