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'Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.'

21 April 2014

'The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story. As someone once said, the definition of genius - not that I'm a genius - is to have two conflicting opinions about any one subject and that's what I do all the time. Some call it ambiguity. I call it lack of resolution...

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby. There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.'

John le Carré, author of A Delicate Truth and nineteen other novels, in the Sunday Telegraph's Seven