March 2020

Another day, another tributary.This one, though, was the keeper of a secret. A four-and-a-half hours or so speed-launch trip upriver from Iquitos had delivered me to somewhere so far off in the Amazon Basin that I could barely believe I was there. Later came a three-hour trek through lush, dense primary rainforest, along with a couple of other reasonably seasoned

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I’ve always admired John le Carré’s fiction. ‘𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒑𝒚 𝑾𝒉𝒐 𝑪𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝑰𝒏 𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒐𝒍𝒅’, and ‘𝑻𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒆𝒓, 𝑻𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒓, 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒅𝒊𝒆𝒓, 𝑺𝒑𝒚’ trilogy, rank as modern classics. No other writer in the field has quite matched him in his unravelling of the complexities of the secret world. My own fiction owes a debt to him as he has greatly enhanced my understanding

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