I have been having a John le Carré holiday. Five years after the great master of the spy thriller went to his final safe house in the sky, I spent chunks of the festive season watching two of his series on TV, and reading a slim volume called The Secret Life of John le Carré by his biographer Adam Sisman.

Amazon Prime’s big New Year drama offering is The Night Manager, a sequel series to one of le Carré’s later stories, and simultaneously the BBC has been re-running le Carré’s 1970s masterpiece, the seven-part mole hunt Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, starring the late, great Alec Guinness as spymaster George Smiley.

Sadly, on two successive nights I found myself falling asleep in front of the dramas. Pinching myself awake, I reached a sad conclusion: the stories of the much praised master of the spy thriller just aren’t very thrilling.

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Even the presence of great actors like Guinness and Tom Hiddleston, star of The Night Manager, failed to keep me awake. Analyzing the reason for this, I came to the conclusion that watching a group of middle-aged men in suits stirring tepid tea in shabby offices while shuffling files and discussing absent friends in incomprehensible jargon about lamplighters and cousins is not the stuff to keep me on the edge of my seat.

Too much of le Carré’s work is like this: wordy,........

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