So, as the lines between public and private interests become blurred there’s an ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster (p. 414), all of whom have a vested interest in ensuring there’s no one out there asking difficult or embarrassing questions.
That’s not to suggest that Le Carré’s Deep State, the inner core of the establishment, enjoys a monopoly on shortsightedness, hypocrisy, lies and unfettered greed, and it’s not as if a ruthless determination to protect their own self interest is a recent development.
You can see le Carré’s pursuit of hypocrisy, cant and double-dealing among the political and administrative elite as a theme running through all his work, but faced with recent developments on the world stage, as le Carré put it in an essay in last month’s issue of Harper’s, How far can we go in the rightful defence of our Western values without abandoning them along the way?
And that, of course, is what A Delicate Truth is all about.
Links:
How Carne Ross Created A New Kind Of Diplomacy
Even Le Carré's latest fiction can't do justice to Snowden
Conversations with John le Carré
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