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This page lists novels and non-fiction books by John le Carré. A section listing books about John le Carré is also included.

John le Carré is the pen name used by David Cornwell.

The cover images are for the first edition and for a recent paperback or digital edition.

By John le Carré
- novels
- non-fiction

About John le Carré
- biographical / critical

Call for the Dead

John le Carré

1961

A George Smiley novel.

"After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the man's death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan's widow to find out what could have led him to such desperation. But on the very day that Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man. Do the East Germans - and their agents - know more about this man's death than the Circus previously imagined?"

A Murder of Quality

John le Carré

1962

A George Smiley novel.

"Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doilies and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. Smiley knows that Stella feared her husband would murder her, but as he probes further beneath Carne's respectable veneer, he uncovers far more than a simple crime of passion. In his second George Smiley novel, le Carré moves outside the world of espionage to reveal the secrets at the heart of another particularly English institution. The result is a pitch-perfect murder mystery, with Smiley as master detective."

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

John le Carré

1963

George Smiley appears in this novel.

"Alex Leamas is tired. It's the 1960s, he's been out in the cold for years, spying in the shadow of the Berlin Wall for his British masters. He has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last - but only after one final assignment. He must travel deep into the heart of Communist Germany and betray his country, a job that he will do with his usual cynical professionalism. But when George Smiley tries to help a young woman Leamas has befriended, Leamas's mission may prove to be the worst thing he could ever have done. In le Carré's breakthrough work of 1963, the spy story is reborn as a gritty and terrible tale of men who are caught up in politics beyond their imagining."

The Looking Glass War

John le Carré

1965

George Smiley appears in this novel.

"When the Department - faded since the war and busy only with bureaucratic battles - hears rumour of a missile base near the West German border, it seems like the perfect opportunity to regain some political standing in the Intelligence market place. The Cold War is at its height and the Department is dying for a piece of the action. Swiftly becoming carried away by fear and pride, the Department and her officers send deactivated agent Fred Leiser back into East Germany, armed only with some schoolboy training and his memories of the war. In the land of eloquent silence that is Communist East Germany, Leiser's fate becomes inseparable from the Department's."

A Small Town in Germany

John le Carré

1968

"West Germany, a simmering cauldron of radical protests, has produced a new danger to Britain: Karfeld, menacing leader of the opposition. At the same time Leo Harting, a Second Secretary in the British Embassy, has gone missing - along with more than forty Confidential embassy files. Alan Turner of the Foreign Office must travel to Bonn to recover them, facing riots, Nazi secrets and the delicate machinations of an unstable Europe in the throes of the Cold War. As Turner gets closer to the truth of Harting's disappearance, he will discover that the face of International relations - and the attentions of the British Ministry itself - is uglier that he could possibly have imagined."

The Naďve and Sentimental Lover

John le Carré

1971

"Aldo Cassidy is a cautious man. He has a pleasant family, drives a safe, expensive car and wears luxurious clothes. But his soothing existence is upended when he meets Shamus and Helen - a dazzling, bohemian couple who are everything he is not. As he is drawn into their reckless and unpredictable orbit, all that Cassidy thought he understood about his orderly life begins to unravel."

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

John le Carré

1974

A George Smiley novel.

"In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy we meet Smiley in short-lived retirement, deserted by his beautiful wife, wrestling with idleness and disillusionment. And haunted by the secret fear that one day, out of a past so complex that he himself could not remember all the enemies he might have made, one of them would find him and demand a reckoning. At the dead of night, in the house of a member of the Cabinet Office, a mission is put to George Smiley. ‘You’ll take the job, clean the stables? Go backwards, go forwards, do whatever is necessary?’ As Smiley retraces path after path into his own past there is no longer any difference between the two: forwards or backwards, George Smiley has embarked on a blind night walk with God knows how many bodies at the end. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a world of hoods and lamplighters, scalphunters and pavement artists, where men are turned, burned or bought for stock; a world of moles, legmen, listeners and watchers."

The Honourable Schoolboy

John le Carré

1977

A George Smiley novel.

"George Smiley has become acting Chief of the Circus, or rather what remains of it. For the credibility of the British Secret Service has been shattered by his unmasking of a traitor within. It is being starved of funds by Whitehall, and sidelined by its American cousins. Smiley’s appointment, therefore, seems more like retribution than promotion. Yet from the first he goes onto the attack. His adversary is Karla, workname of the Soviet case officer who masterminded the Circus’s ruin. His battleground is Hong Kong, and his choice of weapons is the Honourable Gerald Westerby, Eastern hand and Fleet Street hack. Westerby’s odyssey takes him to collapsing Cambodia and Vietnam, to the insurgency area of North East Thailand and finally to the southernmost tip of the Hong Kong archipelago, to the very edge of the China Sea. His belated coming of age, his bounding humanity striving to get out, his courage and his recognition of love, are set in mounting dramatic contrast to the ever-growing needs of the service that claims his allegiance."

Smiley's People

John le Carré

1979

A George Smiley novel.

"A Russian émigré woman is accosted in Paris in broad daylight by a Soviet intelligence officer. A scared Estonian boy plays courier in Hamburg. In London at the dead of night, George Smiley is summoned from his lonely bed by news of the murder of an ex-agent. His brief is to bury the crime, not solve it. His dilemma is the number of ghosts from the past who clamour to him from the shadows. Through scenes of mounting revelation, and a cast of superbly drawn characters, through Switzerland, Hamburg, Paris and the fens of Schleswig-Holstein, le Carré rallies us irresistibly to the chase, till we find ourselves at Smiley’s very side on the Berlin border, where Smiley’s people – the ‘no-men of no-man’s land’ – conduct their grimy commerce."

The Little Drummer Girl

John le Carré

1983

"Charlie is a promiscuous, unsuccessful, left-wing English actress in her twenties. She is in search of commitment. But to what, and to whom? Joseph is the name which Charlie and her friends have given to the handsome, solitary bather lying on the beach at Mykonos, who seems to need nothing but a water bottle and his little library of left-wing literature. Together under the heat of the Greek sun, the two share a moment of passion. But this duplicitous liaison will in fact lead Charlie to her most dangerous role yet. Forced to play decoy in a mission to ensnare an elusive Palestinian terrorist, Charlie must lead him into a delicate trap, at the risk of falling in it herself."

A Perfect Spy

John le Carré

1986

"Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a secret agent. Pym's life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets. Dominated by a father who is also a confidence trickster on an epic scale, Pym has from the age of seventeen been controlled by two mentors. It is these men, racing each other, who are orchestrating the search to find the perfect spy."

The Russia House

John le Carré

1989

"Barley Blair is not a Service man: he is a small-time publisher, a self-destructive soul whose only loves are whisky and jazz. But it was Barley who, one drunken night at a dacha in Peredelkino during the Moscow Book Fair, was befriended by a high-ranking Soviet scientist who could be the greatest asset to the West since perestroika began, and made a promise. Nearly a year later, his drunken promise returns to haunt him. A reluctant Barley is quickly trained by British Intelligence and sent to Moscow to liaise with a go-between, the beautiful Katya. Both are lonely and disillusioned. Each is increasingly certain that if the human race is to have any future, all must betray their countries."

The Secret Pilgrim

John le Carré

1990

George Smiley appear s in this novel.

"The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks the truth - perhaps the last the students will ever hear. As they listen, Ned recalls his own painful triumphs and inglorious failures, in a career that took him from the Western Isles of Scotland to Hamburg and from Israel to Cambodia. He asks himself: Did it do any good? What did it do to me? And what will happen to us now? In this final Smiley novel, the great spy gives his own humane and unexpected answers."

The Night Manager

John le Carré

1993

"At the start of it all, Jonathan Pine is merely the night manager at a luxury hotel. But when a single attempt to pass on information to the British authorities - about an international businessman at the hotel with suspicious dealings - backfires terribly, and people close to Pine begin to die, he commits himself to a battle against powerful forces he cannot begin to imagine. In a chilling tale of corrupt intelligence agencies, billion-dollar price tags and the truth of the brutal arms trade, John le Carré creates a claustrophobic world in which no one can be trusted."

Our Game

John le Carré

1995

"The Cold War is over and retired secret servant Tim Cranmer has been put out to pasture, spending his days making wine on his Somerset estate. But then he discovers that his former double agent Larry - dreamer, dissolute, philanderer and disloyal friend - has vanished, along with Tim's mistress. As their trail takes him to the lawless wilds of Russia and the North Caucasus, he is forced to question everything he stood for."

The Tailor of Panama

John le Carré

1996

"Charmer, fabulist and tailor to Panama's rich and powerful, Harry Pendel loves to tell stories. But when the British spy Andrew Osnard - a man of large appetites, for women, information and above all money - walks into his shop, Harry's fantastical inventions take on a life of their own. Soon he finds himself out of his depth in an international game he can never hope to win. Le Carré's savage satire on the espionage trade is set in a corrupt universe without heroes or honour, where the innocent are collateral damage and treachery plays out as tragic farce."

Single & Single

John le Carré

1999

"Why was an English lawyer shot dead in Turkey by his firm's top client? How can a down-at-heel magician in Devon explain the vast fortune that has mysteriously appeared in his daughter's trust fund? With customs officer Nat Brock on the trail, the answers point to the House of Single - once a respectable finance company, now entangled with a Russian crime syndicate. West is pitted against East, and the British establishment against a labyrinthine criminal superpower, in le Carré's searing novel of lives built upon lies."

The Constant Gardener

John le Carré

2001

"John le Carré’s new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African novel and travelling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa’s husband, Justin, a career diplomat and amateur gardener at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive. His quest takes him to the Foreign Office in London, across Europe and Canada and back to Africa, to the depths of South Sudan, and finally to the very spot where Tessa died. On his way he meets terror, violence, laughter, conspiracy and knowledge. But his greatest discovery is the woman he barely had time to love."

Absolute Friends

John le Carré

2003

"Broke and working as a tour guide in Germany, rootless Englishman Ted Mundy catches a glimpse of an old friend hiding in the shadows. A friend he thought was lost to him. A friend who took him from radical 1960s Berlin to life as a double agent. Now, decades later, the Cold War is over and the war on terror has begun. Sasha has another mission for them both, but this time it is impossible to tell the difference between allies - and enemies."

The Mission Song

John le Carré

2006

"Bruno Salvador, known to friends and enemies alike as Salvo, is the ever-innocent, twenty-nine-year-old orphaned love-child of a Catholic Irish missionary and a Congolese headman’s daughter. Educated first at mission school in the East Congolese province of Kivu, and later at a discreet sanctuary for the secret sons of Rome, Salvo is inspired by his mentor Brother Michael to train as a professional interpreter in the minority African languages of which, almost from birth, he has been an obsessive collector. Soon a rising star in his profession, he is courted by City corporations, hospitals, law courts, the Immigration services and – inevitably – the mushrooming overworld of British Intelligence. He is also courted – and won – by the all-white, Surrey-born Penelope, star reporter on one of our great national newspapers, whom with typical impulsiveness he promptly marries. Yet even as the story opens, a contrary and irresistible love is dawning in him. Despatched to a no-name island in the North Sea to attend a top-secret meeting between Western financiers and East Congolese warlords, Salvo is obliged to interpret matters never intended for his re-awoken African conscience."

A Most Wanted Man

John le Carré

2008

"A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career. In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Freres, a failing British bank based in Hamburg. A triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the so-called War on Terror, the spies of three nations converge upon the innocents."

Our Kind of Traitor

John le Carré

2010

"Britain is in the depths of recession. A left-leaning young Oxford academic and his barrister girlfriend take an off-peak holiday on the Caribbean island of Antigua. By seeming chance they bump into a Russian millionaire called Dima who owns a peninsula and a diamond-encrusted gold watch. He also has a tattoo on his right thumb, and wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the young lovers on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps, to the murkiest cloisters of the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain's Intelligence Establishment."

A Delicate Truth

John le Carré

2013

"A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony, Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's Private Secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Three years later, when the horrifying truth behind Operation Wildlife is uncovered, Toby will be forced to choose between his conscience and his duty to the Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?"

A Legacy of Spies

John le Carré

2017

George Smiley appears in this novel.

"Peter Guillam, former disciple of George Smiley in the British Secret Service, has long retired to Brittany when a letter arrives, summoning him to London. The reason? Cold War ghosts have come back to haunt him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of the Service are to be dissected by a generation with no memory of the Berlin Wall. Somebody must pay for innocent blood spilt in the name of the greater good."

Not One More Death

Brian Eno, Harold Pinter, John le Carré, Richard Dawkins, Michael Faber, Haifa Zangana

2006

Includes the essay The United States Has Gone Mad by John le Carré.

"At a time when the US and UK are contemplating further imperial adventures in Iran, Not One More Death lays bare the act of blatant state terrorism that is the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and reveals the extraordinary tapestry of lies, distortions and gross media manipulation that underpin it. Here, prominent artists, musicians, playwrights, scientists and writers look at the reality behind the rhetoric: how public opinion is wilfully ignored and 'democracy' used as a figleaf for the furthering of colonial ambitions in the Middle East."

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

Ben MacIntyre

2014

Includes an essay on Kim Philby by John le Carré as an Afterword.

"Kim Philby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in history. Agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, he betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians in the early years of the Cold War. .... With access to newly released MI5 files and previously unseen family papers, and with the cooperation of former officers of MI6 and the CIA, this definitive biography unlocks what is perhaps the last great secret of the Cold War."

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life

John le Carré

2016

"From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion, to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, John le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive - reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire, or visiting Rwanda's museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide, or celebrating New Year's Eve with Yasser Arafat, or interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev, or watching Alec Guinness preparing for his role as George Smiley, or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in his The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humour, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood. Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters."

Secret Agents In fiction : Ian Fleming, John le Carre, and Len Deighton

Lars Ole Sauerberg

1984

"Traces the history of the secret agent genre, discusses the literary quality of spy fiction, and examines the themes used by three top British authors."

John le Carré

Peter Lewis

1985

"Provides critical analyses of nine spy novels by the English author and examines the development of his literary style."

The Novels of John Le Carré

David Monaghan

1985

Smiley's Circus: A Guide to the Secret World of John le Carré

David Monaghan

1986

"A comprehensive catalog of the byzantine operations of the "Circus" and the details surrounding the life of fictional spy George Smiley."

John le Carré

Eric Homberger

Routledge Kegan & Paul

1986

Taking Sides: The Fiction Of John le Carré

Tony Barley

1986

John le Carré

Editor: Harold Bloom

Chelsea House

1987

"A selection of criticism-arranged in chronological order of publication, devoted to the fiction of John le Carré."

Corridors of Deceit: The World of John le Carré

Peter Wolfe

1987

"Peter Wolfe has produced an informative study of le Carré’s works, showing how le Carré’s five years in the Service (British Intelligence) helped him become a keen observer, social historian, and expert in bureaucratic politics. He has supplanted the technological flair marking much of today's spy fiction with moral complexity and psychological depth. He shows us what spies are like, how they feel about spying, and how spying affects their minds."

The Quest For Le Carré/h3>

Editor: Alan Bold

1988

A collection of nine essays about Le Carré.

John Le Carré

Lynndianne Beene

Twayne Publishers

1992

"In John le Carré's artful espionage novels, the most prominent 'spy' might well be the author himself, for throughout his fiction readers see a worried, conscientious man peering into the deformed hearts of those who would betray his people and warning us of their trickery. Le Carré has amassed broad popular and critical appeal by exploring difficult subjects while keeping his books engaging, lucid, and within the boundaries of the genre he now defines. Using his constant theme of the meretricious relationship of love and betrayal, he exploits the conventions of espionage fiction to show that no absolute standards of public or personal conduct exist, that humanism, no matter how ponderously examined, cannot avoid inhumanity."

Understanding John Le Carré

John L. Cobbs

1998

"This text provides an introduction to a writer who is arguably 20th-century England's most successful serious novelist and one of the foremost living figure in English literature of espionage and detection. The author aims to establish that le Carré's fiction transcends the genre of espionage writing, and that he is pre-eminently a social commentator who writes novels of manners. He analyzes each of le Carré's novels, placing special emphasis on the George Smiley novels, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, The Little Drummer Girl and A Perfect Spy. Of particular interest, he discusses the post-Cold War works, including The Night Manager, Our Game and The Tailor of Panama. In addition to providing a critical overview of le Carré's career, John L. Cobbs offers a biographical sketch in which he describes le Carré's often overlooked academic success and reputation as one who once worked in British intelligence, perhaps as a spy."

Le Carré's Landscape

Tod Hoffman

2001

"In Le Carré's Landscape Tod Hoffman, a former intelligence officer, offers a unique perspective on le Carré's work. He juxtaposes his own experiences and extensive research with le Carré's fiction, shedding light on those dank recesses where spying is done. Taking the reader through the countries and continents of le Carré's fiction, Hoffman reflects on the political causes and personal effect of spying - secrecy, manipulation, deceit, treason. Le Carré's Landscape is a unique look at the master of the spy genre - a man who has captured the imaginations of millions of readers and perhaps enticed more than a few into the real world of espionage."

The Spy Novels of John Le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics/h3>

Myron J. Aronoff

2001

"In The Spy Novels of John le Carré , author Myron Aronoff interprets the ambiguous ethical and political implications of the work of John le Carré, revealing him to be one of the most important political writers of our time. Aronoff shows how through his writing, le Carré poses the difficult question of to what extent are western governments justified in pursuing raison d'état without undermining the very democratic freedoms that they claim to defend. He also draws parallels between the self-parody of le Carré and that of the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan Steen, and explains how it expresses a unique form of ambiguous moralism. In this volume Aronoff relates le Carré's fictional world to the real world of espionage, and demonstrates the need to balance the imperatives of ethics and politics in regard to some of the most pressing issues facing the world today."

Conversations With John Le Carré/h3>

Editor: Matthew J. Bruccoli, Judith S. Baughman

2004

"In Conversations with John le Carré, the acclaimed writer talks about his craft, the nature of language, the literature that he loves, and the ways in which his own life influences the creation of, and characters within, his novels. He worked for the British Foreign Office in the 1960s, and although his works are dazzlingly informed about global politics, le Carré's voice is distinctively British. His love of language, particularly the ways in which it can reveal or conceal thought and action, is evident in every piece here. In interviews with George Plimpton, Melvyn Bragg, and others, le Carré proves himself to be quick witted, engaging, and deeply passionate. Though often self-deprecating in his humor, le Carré reveals his commitment to the spy thriller and tells us why he thinks it is just as capable of exploring human consciousness as any other literary genre."

The Art of Indirection in British Espionage Fiction: A Critical Study of Six Novelists

Robert Lance Snyder

2011

"In contrast to the classical detective story, the spy novel tends to be considered a suspect, somewhat subversive genre. While previous studies have focused on its historical, thematic, and ideological dimensions, this critical work examines British espionage fiction’s unique narrative form, which is typically elliptical, oblique, and recursive. Featured works include eighteen novels by Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Len Deighton, John le Carré, Stella Rimington, and Charles Cumming, most of which exemplify the existential or serious spy thriller. Half of these texts pertain to the Cold War era and the other half to its aftermath in the so-called Age of Terrorism."

John le Carré: The Biography

Adam Sisman

2015

"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."

John Le Carré's Post-Cold War Fiction

Robert Lance Snyder

2017

"This book challenges distinctions between 'popular' and 'serious' literature by recognizing le Carré as one of the most significant ethicists in contemporary fiction, contributing to an overdue reassessment of his literary stature. Le Carré's ten post-Cold War novels constitute a distinctive subset of his espionage fiction in their response to the momentous changes in geopolitics that began in the 1990s. Through a close reading of these novels, Snyder traces how-amid the 'War on Terror' and transnationalism - le Carré weighes what is at stake in this conflict of deeply invested ideologies."

John le Carré and the Cold War

Toby Manning

2018

"John le Carré and the Cold War explores the historical contexts and political implications of le Carré's major Cold-War novels. The first in-depth study of le Carré this century, this book analyses his work in light of key topics in 20th-century history, including containment of Communism, decolonization, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, the Cambridge spy-ring, the Vietnam War, the 70s oil crisis and Thatcherism. Examining The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), Smiley's People (1979) and other novels, this book offers an illuminating picture of Cold-War Britain, while situating le Carré's work alongside that of George Orwell, Graham Greene and Ian Fleming. Providing a valuable contribution to contemporary understandings of both British spy fiction and post-war fiction, Toby Manning challenges the critical consensus to reveal a considerably less radical writer than is conventionally presented."