News broke this morning about a new George Smiley novel written by John le Carré. A Legacy of Spies is set to be released on September 7th, 2017.

Many, myself included, had assumed last years The Pigeon Tunnel would be 85 year old le Carré’s last book, especially after Adam Sisman revealed he had set aside the novel he had been working on. Even more surprising is the return of George Smiley. Le Carré had famously sworn off writing another Smiley novel after his A Secret Pilgrim saying that the performance of Alec Guinness in the two Smiley miniseries had made it difficult to continue writing in Smiley’s voice. 

Smiley’s last appearance was in 1990 and it’s been 57 years since he  first appeared in Call for the Dead.

Spy fans should be very excited.

Waterstones already has a signed limited edition for sale.

Here’s the book description from the publisher via Amazon –

This is the first novel in over twenty-five years to feature George Smiley, le Carré’s most beloved character.

Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinised under disturbing criteria by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications.

Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.