Alice Munro at the Canadian Consulate's residence in New York in 2002, three years before her second husband pleaded guilty to sexually abusing one of Munro's daughters, who recently wrote that the abuse began when she was 9 years old.

Last fall, the acclaimed British biographer Adam Sisman published a slim volume titled “The Secret Life of John le Carre” that explored what Sisman had learned about the late novelist’s serial infidelities during his second marriage. It was material that had been left out of Sisman’s excellent 2015 biography of le Carre, the pen name of David Cornwell.

Sisman begins by laying out the reasons for previously keeping the facts hidden: Initially a cooperative subject, Cornwell had become agitated by what his biographer was learning, and threatened to cut off contact and support; he and his children had implored Sisman not to publish anything that would further torment the writer’s long-suffering spouse. A compromise was eventually struck: Sisman would keep this material confidential while the couple were alive; Cornwell and his wife died within two months of each other at the end of 2020 and early 2021, respectively.

Sisman’s follow-up is unlikely to change people’s opinion about John le Carre, because its revelations are very much in keeping with the themes of his fiction. Even one of........

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