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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator,

and this week I'm joined by Nick Harkaway, who's a distinguished writer in his own right,

but his new book is set in the world of his father, the late John Le Carrey, and it's called

Carla's Choice. It's a new George Smiley novel, which will be greeted with delight

and maybe some trepidation

by the diehard smiley fans. It's a very high-risk project. I should be up front and say,

I think you succeed magnificent in this book. But what was it that set you on the path to doing it?

Yeah, it is the high wire, isn't it?

I kind of almost didn't think about that.

I mean, I obviously did, but I didn't really appreciate it

until after I'd written the book, which would be a good thing.

I mean, I suppose what set them on the path ultimately is my brother,

we were having a conversation.

When we inherited the estate, we also inherited an obligation

to try to keep the books in the public eye and being read.

And in this moment in how publishing works and how the world works, there's a sort of limited and quite obvious list of ways you can do that.

If you're fortunate enough to get your book onto the national curriculum, then obviously a generation of schoolchildren will hate you forever, but you will be known. Otherwise, it's, you know, can you produce a radio or a TV show or, you know,

a really amazing audio adaptation? All of which is possible, but again, it takes time, it takes

resources, and it helps enormously if the book is already in the public eye, whatever, you know,

whichever book it is. And then equally, obviously,

...