From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, John le CarrÔe has always written from the heart of modern times. In this memoir, le CarrÔe is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine-gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth, celebrating New Year's Eve with Yasser Arafat and his high command, interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev, meeting with two former heads of the KGB, watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the BBC TV adaptations, or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le CarrÔe endows each happening with vividness and humor. Best of all, le CarrÔe gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.