Age is just a number

For authors like John Le Carre, who continue to produce their best work  well into their 80s

My first introduction to spy thrillers came during my teenage years when I stumbled upon John Le Carre in my local library. It was the title of the book that caught my eye: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I was sufficiently intrigued to take the book home. And that night, as I lay down to read myself to sleep as I usually did, I cracked it open and delved into the story. The next thing I knew it was three in the morning and my mother was knocking on my door to ask why my lights were still on. George Smiley, I answered, it’s all his fault.

Since that initiation, I have lost count of the number of nights I have lain awake reading John Le Carre until the wee hours of the morning. But little did I suspect in those early days that Le Carre would keep me entertained for quite so long; that he would still be churning out novels and memoirs well into his 80s. And yet here he is, at the venerable age of 88, with a new book out this month.

Agent Running In the Field is vintage Le Carre, with the novelist at the height of his powers, now writing against the backdrop of Brexit rather than the Cold war, but with the same vim and vigour. As I galloped through the book, staying up till dawn because I just could not put the damn thing down, I couldn’t help but marvel at the author’s mastery of his medium, which has only got better with age.

I guess that is the difference between great songwriters and great authors. Song writers hit their peak in their 20s or, at most, their 30s. Rare is the songwriter who continues to produce great songs after the age of 40. No, seriously, go on, try and think of one great anthem that Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney have written in their later years. Yes, that’s right, you can’t even come up with one.

But with great writers, the longer they live, the more life experiences they accumulate, the better they get at their craft. It’s not just Le Carre, though he is the most recent example. Think back to that other master of suspenseful story-telling: Agatha Christie. She too kept writing well into her old age, and her books just got better and better with every decade. Sure, they were rooted solidly within a certain genre – a murder takes place; there is a surfeit of suspects; there are plenty of red herrings; and the least likely person is found to be guilty – but within those narrow confines, they sparkled and shone with an effervescence that was Christie’s alone, no matter how old she got.

Maybe it is something about murder mysteries as a genre, but they seem to encourage longevity among its practitioners. Take P.D. James, for instance. She only began writing her crime thrillers when she was in her 40s. But once she started, it was as if she could never stop. Her books kept coming till she was well into her 70s, with Adam Dalgliesh ageing gently along with his creator. James’ last book, Death Comes to Pemberley, a homage of sorts to Jane Austen, with James revisiting Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy six years after their wedding, as they are caught up in a mysterious death on their estate, was published just three years before she died at the advanced age of 94.

But while it could be said that Death Comes to Pemberley was far from James’ best work – with the murder mystery being the weakest link in a book that attempted to recreate the world of Jane Austen – there are other authors who have produced their best works in what should be the twilight of their lives.

The first such name that comes to my mind is Elizabeth Jane Howard. A brilliant writer, her professional work was always overshadowed by her personal life, given that she was married to Kingsley Amis, and stepmother to Martin Amis for a while. It was only after her divorce, when she was freed from the shackles of enforced domesticity, did the writer in Howard flower completely.

The result was a set of five books, a family saga set in the aftermath of the Second World War, dubbed The Cazalet Chronicles. This traced the lives of an extended clan of brothers and sisters, cousins and siblings, governesses and maids, as they dealt with a rapidly-changing world, in which the old certainties they swore by did not hold. Howard allowed the sprawling cast of characters – all of them fully fleshed out with dreams, desires and motivations of their own – story arcs that extended over a ten year period, showing how completely family fortunes can change over a single decade. If you haven’t read these books yet, you’re in for a treat when you finally do.

All of this makes me wonder how things would have turned out if Jane Austen hadn’t died at the age of 41. What if she had grown into her 70s or even 80s; what if she had married and acquired a family, or even a step-family; what if she had dealt with the indignities of ageing; what if… How many more masterpieces like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility would she have produced if only she had been allowed the gift of old age? Sadly, we will never know.