Adam Sisman Journalist Profile

Articles

The crusading journalist who lectured on Shelley to coal miners

Aug 7, 2024 | spectator.com.au | Adam Sisman

Paul Foot: A Life in Politics Verso, pp.384, 30 ‘The politics of Paul Foot are an extraordinary mixture of first-class reporting, primitive Marxism, family wit and fantasy.’ This judgment is taken from a review of Foot’s first book, The Politics of Harold Wilson (1968). The reviewer was well placed to assess it, and, according to this biography, he ‘tore the book apart’.
The crusading journalist who lectured on Shelley to coal miners

Aug 6, 2024 | spectator.co.uk | Adam Sisman

Text size Line Spacing Comments Share Share Adam Sisman The crusading journalist who lectured on Shelley to coal miners Linkedin Messenger Email Paul Foot: A Life in Politics Margaret Renn Verso, pp. 384, £30 ‘The politics of Paul Foot are an extraordinary mixture of first-class reporting, primitive Marxism, family wit and fantasy.’ This judgment is taken from a review of Foot’s first book, The Politics of Harold Wilson (1968). The reviewer was well placed to assess it, and, according to this...
Norman Mailer stabbed his wife, Orwell treated his as a lackey and John le Carré was spectacularly unfaithful. Ysenda Maxtone Graham reviews the best biographies of writers in 2023... Why literary lions make terrible husbands | This is Money

Dec 21, 2023 | thisismoney.co.uk | Ysenda Maxtone Graham |Adam Sisman |Richard Bradford

The Secret Life of John Le Carreby Adam Sisman (Profile £16.99, 208 pp)When Adam Sisman approached David Cornwell, aka John Le Carré, as his possible biographer in 2010, Le Carré cited 'my messy private life' as one of the things that made him extremely nervous about the idea. But he said yes, and Sisman's biography duly came out in 2015, when Le Carré and his second wife Jane were still alive.
The biographer’s last word • Patrick Mullins

Nov 19, 2023 | insidestory.org.au | Adam Sisman |Patrick Mullins

Adam Sisman is an attentive reader. As he demonstrated in biographies of the historian A.J.P. Taylor (1994), poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2006), and academic Hugh Trevor-Roper (2010), he is alive to detail, implications and subtleties. As a scholar of biography, moreover — as manifesting in his prize-winning Boswell’s Presumptuous Task (2000) — he knows the dynamics and tensions that make the form so energising to read and work in.
The biographer’s last word

Nov 19, 2023 | inkl.com | Adam Sisman

“Nobody can have all of David”: John Le Carre and his wife Jane Cornwell at the premiere of The Tailor Of Panama at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival. Franziska Krug/Getty ImagesAdam Sisman is an attentive reader. As he demonstrated in biographies of the historian A.J.P. Taylor (1994), poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2006), and academic Hugh Trevor-Roper (2010), he is alive to detail, implications and subtleties.
Blinking in the sunlight

Nov 9, 2023 | perspectivemag.co.uk | Adam Sisman |Irenosen Okojie |Cosmo Landesman

October has been a busy month for me, as I have a new book out, The Secret Life of John le Carré. My diary, usually comparatively empty, has been crammed with interviews of one kind or another. I have recorded several podcasts and spoken in universities, bookshops and at literary festivals. I have signed a lot of books, though I should like to have signed even more. If you think this sounds glamorous, think again.
The Secret Life of John le Carré

Nov 4, 2023 | bookreporter.com | Adam Sisman

Offering a new perspective on the life of John le Carré, prize-winning British author Adam Sisman explores the great man’s dark side, apart from but not totally unconnected from what was seen in the limelight. John le Carré was a pseudonym chosen by David Cornwell, and he used it in almost every context in his adult life. His father was a criminal who was often unfaithful and hinted to him that it was a sort of norm for all men.
Suleika Dawson - The Spy Novelist Who Loved Me

Nov 1, 2023 | literaryreview.co.uk | Adam Sisman

Adam Sisman presents this new book on John le Carré as a ‘secret annexe’ to his earlier biography of the author. Its subject is the women in le Carré’s life – the ones the novelist didn’t marry, that is, but to whom he repeatedly offered the secret parts of himself, which the ones he did marry almost never got to see. It’s only a slim volume, but, as we are so often told, size doesn’t matter if a fellow knows what he is doing. As one of le Carré’s women myself, I feel in a position to take a view.
Spying is Lying: How David Cornwell Became John Le Carré

Oct 30, 2023 | lithub.com | Adam Sisman

“People believe what they want to believe,” wrote David Cornwell to one of his lovers. “ALWAYS.” He was referring to the “revelation” that Graham Greene had continued working for British intelligence into his seventies. “No good me telling them that GG was far too drunk to remember anything, & that his residual connections with the Brit spooks were romantic fantasy.”When he wrote that people believed what they wanted to believe about Greene, he might just as well have been writing about himself.
THE SECRET LIFE OF JOHN LE CARRÉ

Oct 24, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Adam Sisman |Stephanie Johnson |Brandon Stanton |

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer. Awards & Accolades Likes 38 Our Verdict GET IT New York Times Bestseller A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.