A delicate truth

A Delicate Truth is a 2013 spy novel by British writer John le Carré. Set in 2008 and 2011, the book features a British/American covert mission in Gibraltar and the subsequent consequences for two British civil servants.Le Carré describes this as not only his most British novel but also his most autobiographical work in years. The author told The Daily Telegraph that he has based two of the book's characters on himself. Le Carré sees Toby Bell as "the thirty-something rising star of Her Majesty's Foreign Service ... the striving ambitious fellow I fancy myself to have been at much the same age" – whereas Sir Christopher ("Kit") Probyn is "a retired Foreign Office civil servant, who lives in rural Cornwall" – the author "lived in a clifftop house outside St Buryan, near Land's End, for more than 40 years". The novel may be loosely based on Operation Flavius, the 1988 operation during which three members of the Provisional IRA were shot dead by the British SAS in Gibraltar.