John Le Carre – The Tailor Of Panama – The Tailor of Panama – Publisher’s First Deluxe Edition 1996 – SIGNED and INSCRIBED

First edition. Publisher’s deluxe issue, finely bound in full blue morocco with raised bands, gilt lettering and decoration to spine, decorative endpapers depicting the Sack of Panama, blue silk marker, and housed in the original black slipcase. A fine, apparently unread copy.

A particularly appealing association copy, warmly inscribed by John le Carré to the title page:

“For Maureen + John, with much love, and much nostalgia for our post-imperial Embassy Days! David a.k.a. John le Carr√©. 11.iii.14.”

The recipients were Sir John Graham and his wife Maureen. During the 1960s David Cornwell served in the British Foreign Service at Bonn and Hamburg, where he almost certainly became acquainted with Graham, who would later serve as Head of Chancery in Amman and hold a succession of senior appointments within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The association is especially apt. Few novels draw more directly upon Le Carr√©’s intimate knowledge of Britain’s diplomatic and intelligence world than The Tailor of Panama, his darkly comic satire of espionage and post-imperial diplomacy. The affectionate reference to their shared “Embassy Days” neatly connects author, recipients, and subject matter.

An exceptional inscription linking Le Carré to a close circle of Foreign Office contemporaries, and a superior association copy of one of his most entertaining and politically astute novels.