LE CARRE, John

 “A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.” 

After a stint teaching French and Latin at Eton College, David Cornwell (who adopted his pen name John le Carre when he published his first novel, Call for the Dead in 1961)) served both with MI6 and  MI5, where he learnt the stratagems of counter-intelligence.  Based on his experiences in Bern working for MI6, during his commute to work in London,  he began crafting espionage stories, and found success with his third novel,  The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963), about which Graham Greene wrote “The best spy story I have ever read”.  

His most famous character, George Smiley, appeared either as a main protagonist or as a supporting character in nine of Le Carre’s books and was described by one reviewer as "the sort of spy [Britain] believes it ought to have: a bit shabby, academic, basically loyal, and sceptical of the enthusiasms of his political masters."

Le Carre’s spy thrillers dealt mainly with the human and political ambiguities of the cold war, his characters often morally compromised cogs in a system full of treachery and betrayal living in a gritty, often sordid world stripped of glamour. He was nominated for the Booker prize in 2011 but issued an immediate statement, stating “I do not compete for literary prizes and have therefore asked for my name to be withdrawn.”

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