Well, I am not sure that the cool, reflective prose of Lord S. in 1902 is any great comfort to me. But I will concede the point that, like most English and continental intellectuals, he was ignorant of America.

LeCarre is not such a cut and dried lefty. I strongly suspect (having read all of his stuff) that he started out a British conservative anti-American. Certainly most of his characters conform perfectly to that mold, with a worldview in which Americans are boorish vulgarians rather than enemies of the proletariat and hindrances to world revolution. I think he shows how chaps of this type (like the recently deceased Auberon Waugh) can make common ground with lefties that they used to despise.