"The Great Escape", publisher Norton has just reissued Paul Brickhill´s famous novel "The Great Escape", from which the movie was drawn. Paul Brickhill was not just a journalist doing a job, he was actually one of the prisoners at Stalag Luft III. His book, first published in 1958, is one of the great adventure stories of World War II, and John Sturges´ movie does it full justice.

Another oldies were "A Murder of Quality" and "Call for the Dead", the first two novels of John Le Carre. Both feature George Smiley, the sad, cuckolded, but quietly lethal spy immortalized by Alec Guinness. What pleasure it is to read John Le Carre´s prose, full of flint and asperity, in books that move through three acts of murder and betrayal (Le Carre´s true subject) in less than 200 pages each. Is there anyone in the field today who writes half as well?