The Pigeon Tunnel
Stories from My Life
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Narrated by:
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John le Carré
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Written by:
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John le Carré
About this listen
The New York Times best-selling memoir from John le Carré, the legendary author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and The Night Manager, now an Emmy-nominated television series starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie.
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, 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 the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth; visiting Rwanda’s museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide; celebrating New Year’s Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command; interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev; listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov; meeting with two former heads of the KGB; watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People; or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, 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.
©2016 John le Carré (P)2016 Penguin AudioYou may also enjoy...
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In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. Acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country.
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Other George Smiley Stories
- Written by: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Call for the Dead (Abridged): George Smiley had liked the man and now the man was dead. But why? Fennan was dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn’t go on. Smiley decides to investigate – only to uncover a murderous conspiracy with its roots in his own secret wartime past. A Murder of Quality (Abridged): Miss Ailsa Brimley is in a quandary. She's received a peculiar letter from Mrs Stella Rode, saying that she fears her husband is trying to kill her.
-
-
The horrible sound quality starting in chapter 8
- By Anonymous User on 2023-12-14
Written by: John le Carré
-
Agent Running in the Field
- A Novel
- Written by: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.
-
-
Wonderful.
- By Anonymous User on 2020-01-05
Written by: John le Carré
-
The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- Written by: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels.
-
-
Spectacular Radioplay Adaptations
- By Langer MD on 2021-08-12
Written by: John le Carré
-
Constant Gardener and Other Stories
- Written by: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Constant Gardener (Abridged): The beautiful Tessa Quayle is murdered near Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya, the birthplace of mankind. And her putative African lover and travelling companion has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa’s husband, 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. On his way he meets terror, violence and conspiracy, but his greatest discovery is the woman he barely had time to love.
-
-
Abridged too far
- By Anonymous User on 2023-01-07
Written by: John le Carré
-
A Perfect Spy
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- Written by: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney, Bill Paterson, Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 2 hrs and 50 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.' So says Magnus Pym, the spy of the title; and he has betrayed a lot in his life - countries, friends, family and lovers. When Magnus disappears after his father's funeral, MI6 launches an urgent manhunt to prevent his defection. But Pym is on a search of his own - to unravel the mystery of what made him the perfect spy.
Written by: John le Carré
-
Beyond the Wall
- A History of East Germany
- Written by: Katja Hoyer
- Narrated by: Sam Peter Jackson
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. Acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country.
Written by: Katja Hoyer
What the critics say
One of the NP99: National Post’s best books of 2016
“Recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur—by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“An illuminating, self-effacing and pleasurable inquiry into le Carré’s creative process, offering globe-spanning thrills of a different, but no less captivating kind than those associated with the novels.”—USA Today
“[Le Carré] is a polished raconteur, with an actor’s protean self-presentation, gifts of pace and timing, aptitude for entrances and exits.”—Wall Street Journal
What listeners say about The Pigeon Tunnel
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Anonymous User
- 2024-02-21
A Delight
I have never read any of John Le Carre's fictional works. However, I will now that I have listened to him describe the events from his life that lead to the formation of many of his fictional characters. Truly a delight to listen to. He is a master storyteller with a lifetime of incredible experiences to share. This is worth the listen.
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