The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
Errol Morris’s biographical, documentary interview of David Cornwell—better known to the world by his pen name John le Carré—is an enthralling conversation between two kindred storytellers. Based on interviews completed in 2019 shortly before Cornwell’s death in 2020, the film is an adaptation of le Carré’s book of the same title published in 2016 (and reviewed CIA Chief Historian David Robarge in Studies in its March 2017 edition).
The interview is one that could only have been crafted with the artifice of two master storytellers. Morris pits himself opposite Cornwell in an engagingly heartfelt and at times sorrowful exploration of Cornwell’s life, delving into the complexities of family and relationships, education, and a career spanning both the Security Service (MI5) and Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and global literary fame. Morris weaves Cornwell’s rich, poetic prose with the visual metaphor of the subject seated within a literal wilderness of mirrors—a nod to the labyrinthine nature of counterintelligence.