John Le Carre's A Legacy of Spies

How much of our human feeling can we dispense with in the name of freedom, would you say, before we cease to feel human or free?
-- narrator Peter Guillam, A Legacy of Spies by John Le Carre (Viking 2017)

Le Carre's novels have not been as successful after the end of the Cold War as they were during it, the moral ambiguity replaced by good guys and bad guys (who are usually Americans and their aggressiveness and greed).  In his latest book Le Carre returns to the characters and operations of two of his best novels: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and Tinker,Tailor,Soldier,Spy (1974), as the children of two  people who died in Operation Windfall have brought a suit against the British government.

I have always been one who found Le Carre's plots incomprehensible.  Perhaps there is a good reason for this, as few of the spies involved know more than a small piece of things and there is a great deal of disagreement at the Circus (as the British Secret Service is called) over who is dissembling and who is telling the truth, who is honest and loyal and who is a double agent. A Legacy of Spies is narrated by agent Peter Guillam, who tells us a great deal more than he tells the Circus members who interrogate him.  He largely fails to sort out all the ambiguities in Operation Windfall and eventually tracks down his mentor, George Smiley, who can only say, "If I had an unattainable ideal, it was leading Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason. I have it still."

To a certain extent Le Carre is speaking here for himself.  He is revisiting the moral ambiguity of his earlier novels to emphasize reason, which he still feels is necessary for a lasting peace.