Writer practised in deception lifted the spy novel into the realms of literature
John le Carre, who has died aged 89, drew on the enigma of his incorrigibly criminal father and his own experiences as a spy to write powerful novels about a bleak, morally compromised world in which international intrigue and personal betrayal went hand in hand.
In a literary career spanning six decades, le Carre published more than two dozen books. His best-known titles, including The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), sold in the millions and were made into acclaimed film and television adaptations. More than a master of espionage writing, he was widely regarded as an elegant prose stylist whose skills and reputation were not limited by genre or era.
After the collapse of
Communism in the early 1990s, he turned his attention to a changing landscape of global insecurity, sending his fictional spies to Israel, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Central America in such books as The Little Drummer Girl, The Night Manager, The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener.
His literary admirers included Graham Greene, Philip Roth and Ian McEwan, who once called him ‘‘the most significant novelist of the second half of the 20th century in Britain’’. McEwan said in 2013: ‘‘Most writers I know think le Carre is no longer a spy writer . . . He’s in the first rank.’’
Even his name was an act of deception: John le Carre was a pseudonym adopted by David Cornwell because British intelligence officers were forbidden to publish under their own identities.
Having created such brooding anti-heroes as Alec Leamas, George Smiley and Magnus Pym, le Carre offered an understated view of the spy world that was in sharp contrast to the sex, gadgets and chase-scene formula of Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
Instead, his agents tend to furrow their brows, adjust their glasses and walk inconspicuously along rain-soaked streets, relying on careful observation and endless paperwork. Conversations are muted, offices shabby and guns remain (mostly) holstered. Everything in his novels, from the weather to the clothing to the fine-grained moral choices, seems outfitted in shades of grey.
Tension builds through cryptic gestures, dry humour or meditative glimpses through windows. Loyalties are questioned, relationships are sacrificed, and the fate of nations seems to hinge on all-too-human frailties.
‘‘Le Carre’s contribution to the fiction of espionage has its roots in the truth of how a spy system works,’’ novelist Anthony Burgess wrote in the New York Times Book Review in 1977. ‘‘The people who run intelligence totally lack glamour, their service is short of money, they are up against the crassness of politicians. Their men in the field are frightened, make blunders, grow sick of a trade in which
‘‘Most writers I know think le Carre is no longer a spy writer . . . He’s in the first rank.’’ British novelist Ian McEwan
the opposed sides too often seem to interpenetrate and wear the same face.’’
Le Carre travelled the world for research, cultivating sources as if still engaged in acquiring secrets. In Cambodia, he said he once had to take cover under a car when shooting broke out. When a journalist questioned his memory of certain events they witnessed together, le Carre replied, ‘‘Your job is to get things right. Mine is to turn them into good stories.’’
David John Moore Cornwell was born into a life of constant upheaval, in large part because of ‘‘the extraordinary, the insatiable criminality of my father and the people he had around him’’, he told The Guardian in 2019.
His father, Ronnie, was an inveterate conman, gambler and rogue. He never held a conventional job, was continually in and out of jail throughout his son’s childhood and got by on his immense charm.
To complicate his early life, his mother left when le Carre was 5. He did not see her again until he was 21. He and his brother Anthony attended separate boarding schools and were often left to fend for themselves.
He left England at 16 for Switzerland, where he studied German and was soon ‘‘recruited as a teenaged errand boy of British intelligence’’, he wrote in his 2016 memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel.
He was 18 when he entered the military, assigned to an intelligence unit in Alliedoccupied Vienna. He interviewed World War II refugees and had his first taste of the world of espionage, helping to co-ordinate agents behind Communist lines.
Returning to England, he studied at Oxford University, where he infiltrated Communist student groups for MI5. After graduating in 1956, he taught German at Eton, an elite English boarding school for boys, then two years later joined MI6.
He refused to discuss what he did during his years undercover, except that he posed as a diplomat, usually in German-speaking countries. He published his first three books while still working in intelligence. The success of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold allowed him to resign.
Ronnie Cornwell, meanwhile, married several times, had countless affairs and was incarcerated in at least half a dozen countries. When he died in 1975, le Carre paid for the funeral, but did not attend.
A 2015 biography by Adam Sisman suggested that le Carre’s first marriage, to Ann Sharp, ended in divorce in part because of his emotional coldness and extramarital affairs, and her disdain for his literary ambitions. Survivors include his wife since 1972, Jane Eustace; three sons from his first marriage; a son from his second marriage; and several grandchildren.
No fewer than 15 films and television miniseries have been based on le Carre’s books. He brought Smiley out of retirement once more in 2017 in A Legacy of Spies ,in which a protege recalls the smooth, almost seductive way Smiley recruited him.
‘‘ ‘We were wondering, you see,’ he said in a faraway voice, ‘whether you’d ever consider signing up for us on a more regular basis? People who have worked on the outside for us don’t always fit well on the inside. But in your case, we think you might. We don’t pay a lot, and careers tend to be interrupted. But we do feel it’s an important job, as long as one cares about the end, and not too much about the means.’ ’’ – Washington Post