Personal confessions at a literary luncheon

By GILBERT WONG, books editor

Roald Dahl said the best way to judge a stranger's character was to peer into his ears. If hairy tufts sprouted, then the chap was a bounder and as randy as a rabbit.

Paul Theroux explained that he often travelled to a place merely because he liked the name - no other reason. Fay Weldon, rather typically, talked of a stoush she joyously started at a Booker prize ceremony. A lot said they were writers because they had failed at everything else.

The occasion was the Sydney Morning Herald/Dymocks literary luncheon, which for 12 years has entertained and enlightened audiences of readers and writers. This week the New Zealand Herald has launched the same event in Auckland, with Dymocks as the partner. The guest list will aim for eclectic intelligence, as it does in Sydney. Novelists will mingle with politicians, actors, adventurers, artists, celebrities and ordinary people who might have an extraordinary tale to tell.

The first guest in the 2001 series is John Le Carre, whose latest novel is The Constant Gardener. He made his name with Cold War spy thrillers that owed much to his own time as a minor British diplomat posted to Bonn.

A film of his novel, The Tailor of Panama, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this week.

At the premiere he said he had little confidence in the ascent of the world's new leaders - American President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon.

"I think hostility is a much easier posture in politics than conciliation and I think we need to dismantle the process of aggression between us. And I don't see that happening with those three gentlemen," he said.

Le Carre said some of the other film adaptations of his books, such as The Little Drummer Girl in 1983 and The Looking Glass War in 1965, were catastrophic. "To turn a book into a movie is like turning a cow into a bouillon cube," he told Reuters. He was pleased with The Tailor of Panama, directed by John Boorman.

*Literary luncheon guests will be able to hear Le Carre on March 5.