"In 2001, he declines, in scathing tones of barely contained fury, an invitation to speak to the employees of the pharmaceutical company Novartis, whose industry he attacked in his novel “The Constant Gardener.” “I think I struck a nerve, and made you angry,” le Carré writes. “Which, believe it or not, is one of the most useful functions that a free writer can perform in an era of insufferable corporate arrogance.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/books/lecarre-book-letters.html