The Honourable Schoolboy

"Thank you, yes. It must be midday by now. My next book is The Honourable Schoolboy . Now, why did I choose that? Got it. A terrific story, it goes without saying. For one thing, it comes from the golden age when le Carré still cared about plot. But it’s his gift for dialogue that electrifies all his books, especially the dialogues where people are bluffing or coercing one another, and with that gift he captures perfectly the milieu of journalism in Hong Kong, where I spent my early years as a foreign correspondent. I got there just in time to catch some of le Carré’s originals in their natural habitat. And to take many a pee in the men’s loo at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club, in the old premises on the 14th floor of the Cable and Wireless Building, with an amazing view out of the window across the harbour to the Kowloon side – as described lavishly in the pages of The Honourable Schoolboy . Le Carré’s model for Craw, doyen of the FCC, linchpin (though not title character) of The Honourable Schoolboy , was the Australian journalist Richard Hughes. A wily old warhorse. Hide like an elephant. He fell asleep in his soup one bibulous lunch time at the Hong Kong Hilton Grill, and woke up with a start half an hour later. ‘Where am I?’ he said. ‘You’re in the Hilton Grill,’ his friends said reassuringly. ‘I know that, you fool,’ said Hughes. ‘But which country?’ Funnily enough, that’s exactly what the copy takers used to say, as politely as they could, back in the days when you could phone a story in. Well we’re over the hump. After the jump. Below the fold. Whatever. Two more books."