Friend Reggie draws our attention to this 1995 letter from John le Carré to Stephen Fry. Fry had suffered a breakdown and done a bunk while performing in a West End play called Cell Mates. In sympathy, John le Carré writes:

if you’re in the escaping business, here’s what you do: you call Jim Webster, boat broker, in Fort Lauderdale, you charter a small motor yacht with crew out of Nassau, and you cruise the remote islands of the Exumas for 2 weeks at unbelievable cost and you will have escaped as never before. You take friends if you need them, speak or don’t speak to the crew, anchor in empty bays rather than marinas, and you escape all mankind.

So that, says Reggie, is how the other half escape. Blimey.

le Carré goes on to recommend certain places in Germany conducive to going to ground. I’m not sure why Germany, as Fry scarpered to Bruges in Belgium, but among the places he likes is Freiberg (“lots of dotty families hidden in the hills”), which is where I went to interview Jonathan of Analog Sea for our Issue 15. I can confirm it’s a beautiful place to hide. He also mentions access to libraries, which I agree are useful facilities to consider when plotting an escape: never go where books aren’t.

He goes on to give his credentials as an escape artist, “speaking as an artist in this field, albeit a failed one:”

I completely relate to your duckdive … I escaped from Sherborne to Berne (at 16), dived into a monestary in order to escape marriage, escaped to the spooks, escaped the spooks to writing, nearly at times escaped writing for the ultimate escape, and now I’m 63 so who gives a fuck anyway?

The he ends the letter with: