...recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur — by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.

The Pigeon Tunnel is written in episodic chapters that can be read like short stories. Every sentence strives for effect. Mr. le Carré never relaxes control over his readers. Wherever he goes, he watches relentlessly and is collecting copy. Resentful anger and virile aggression are kept in check so that his descriptions are pungent but never spiteful.

The result is not so much a memoir as a collection of memories, many of them containing tantalizing intimations of a powerful autobiography that still yearns to be written.

That is the memoir’s beauty. Apart from stories of a Romantic wanderer through powerful haunts it offers thrills of recognition as le Carré’s archetypes spring to life.

...well written, pithy and not in the least vainglorious.

...with beguilingly barbed wit and seductive self-deprecation, throws light on the life that shaped that fiction.

The Pigeon Tunnel is a special kind of treat for anyone who has allowed John le Carré to lead them down alleyways and into the world’s shadiest corners.

...[a] remarkable memoir.

le Carré plays fair with the reader at the outset by declaring that he is not using this occasion to write at length about his family life; nor he is going to add any details about his real-life spy work...With all that content kept off-limits, The Pigeon Tunnel still comes across as 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..

Once again, Le Carré remains tight-lipped about key details of his intelligence work, but he offsets this reticence by offering fascinating insight into the people and places that have informed his writing.

...this memoir is a glittering treasure-chest of great stories — some sobering, some funny, but always incisive, witty and spellbinding. The prose is silky smooth, and the voice is effortlessly fluent. The anecdotes glide between present and past tenses, providing the added intimacy of a born storyteller.

The Pigeon Tunnel is anything but a standard 'and then this happened to me' autobiography. Instead, the volume presents a series of artfully told anecdotes, grouped thematically rather than chronologically, from an eventful, accomplished and lengthy career.

The chapter on his father is the best thing about The Pigeon Tunnel. His bitter memories of Ronnie are the closest this highly guarded author comes to self-revelation.

[LeCarre] brings the stuff, often with humor and an unexpected twist.

Here and elsewhere, David asks himself whether his childhood—con man father, absent mother—led him inexorably toward the spy profession...Much to his credit, he does not make a facile link between childhood lying, adolescent disguise, and the deceits of intelligence work.