John le Carré and the White Lady
I’m looking at gin cocktail that features in one of John le Carré’s more obscure novels, 'The Looking Glass War'.
Before I get into this week’s drink, a quick update on my new book Vines in a Cold Climate: the people behind the English wine revolution. Publication date is 3 August and it’s now available for pre-order. At the moment we’re trying to solicit blurbs from well-known people so if anyone can think of someone who is a) very famous and influential b) might have the time and interest to read a book about English wine let me know.
Right, that’s enough book pluggage, on with Sunday Drinking! This week’s drink, the White Lady, is inspired by an essay Jeremy Duns wrote a couple of years ago for The Times on John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War. He writes
“The novel was panned on its publication in 1965, seen as a flop after The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It is an austere, uncompromising book; le Carré felt his breakthrough had glamourised the spy game (not a charge many would level at it) and so decided to tell a story in which everyone is deceived—by themselves, others, or both.”
I read the novel on Duns’ recommendation (in fact I’d highly recommend reading Duns’ own spy fiction which is masterful) and it really is a strange and unsettling piece of work. It’s written in the full sardonic style that le Carré would use more frequently in later novels. Every action is suffused with dramatic irony; from the very beginning you know that things are going to go badly wrong. Duns writes:
"The novel centres around a British intelligence agency known as ‘The Department’, which we learn was highly active in the Second World War from headquarters in Baker Street but is now a shadow of its former self, and housed in a ‘crabbed, sooty villa of a place’ in Southwark. The agency has a remit to gather military intelligence, but no longer has any trained operatives or equipment to do so effectively.”
These deluded has-beens decided to relive past glories by sending a British Pole Fred Leiser into East Germany with predictably disastrous consequences. Leiser is a classic le Carré hero - an outsider and a ladies man - rather like the novelist himself. His choice of drink, a White Lady, I think speaks volumes about his character. “It’s the only thing I drink,” he says at one point in the book.
The White Lady is a cocktail from the golden age: a mixture of gin, Cointreau, sugar and lemon juice, and usually made with an egg white, like a take on the Sidecar. The drink is usually attributed to Harry McElhone of Harry’s Bar in Paris. It is said that he invented it in London when he was working at Ciro Club and it was originally made with crème de menthe. When he moved to Paris in the 1920s, he used gin instead and the classic White Lady recipe was born. Another version of the story tells how it was actually invented by Harry Craddock at the American Bar in the Savoy Hotel. There’s a further embellishment to this story that he named it after Zelda Fitzgerald who was a platinum blonde at the time hence White Lady, which sounds much too good to be true.
Whoever invented it, the White Lady is a drink that requires precision and some hard shaking to emulsify the egg white, is not something you can imagine the bartender in a London pub happily doing nowadays let alone in the ‘60s when the book is set. Have you ever asked for a proper cocktail in an old-fashioned boozer? It’s best avoided. A friend of mine once ordered a Dry Martini in a place in Hackney and ended up with sweet vermouth on the rocks. You learn pretty quickly that it’s best to stick to beer or spirits in most pubs. At one point, a Paddington barmaid says to Leiser: “Can’t mix it for you now, dear, not til the rush dies down.” Instead, “he ordered a gin and Italian and got it warm with no cherry.” Should have stuck to beer, Fred.
Why does le Carré give him such an odd drink? I think le Carré is saying that Leiser doesn’t fit in, he may have been in England for 20 years but he’s not ‘one of us’ as the people in British intelligence might say. Also that he’s a bit flash, Leiser says at one point: “I got a lot more money than you. White Lady’s an expensive drink.” But perhaps le Carré is having a bit of fun at the expense of James Bond with his Vodka Martini. As if to say, how ridiculous it is having a signature drink in real life.
If you only take away one thing from The Looking Glass War, it’s don’t order a cocktail in the pub. While reading the book, I imagined some of the horrors Leiser had been given when he ordered his favourite drink. No wonder when he makes one at home, it says: “He mixed himself a White Lady, carefully, like a man making up medicine.” And that’s just how you should make yours too.
Here’s how to make a White Lady:
50ml London Dry Gin
25ml lemon juice
25ml Cointreau
12ml sugar syrup
1/2 an egg white
Add all the ingredients to the shaker, dry shake hard for a minute. You need to shake hard to emulsify the egg white. Add ice and shaker quickly, until ice forms on the outside. Strain into a chilled Martini glass and garnish with a twist of lemon peel.
Hello Henry. Big fan of le Carré so will check this out (and also Jeremy Duns - thanks for the heads up). If I were looking to launch my book sales into orbit I would either chose someone who has significant traction with people who like wine eg Helen McGinn or Olly Smith. Or go down a different route and tap into female chefs eg Lisa Goodwin-Allen, Sarah Hayward, Angela Hartnett who have big followings. Failing that maybe an English female writer like Dolly Alderton (who is a wine lover). It feels a bit obvious going for a female wine journal/critic like Tam Currin and Young Shi (at Jancisrobinson.com) but I guess it depends on who you audience is for the book... Best of luck