John le Carre, British master of espionage novels, dies aged 89
LONDON: David Cornwell, known as John le Carre, whose career as British intelligence gave him many inputs for his popular novels, died on Saturday after a short illness, his agent said. He was 89.
“His like will never be seen again, and his loss will be felt by every book lover, everyone interested in the human condition,” said Jonny Geller, the agent, said on Sunday. Cornwell is survived by his wife, Jane, and four sons. The family said he died of pneumonia.
In such classics as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy, Le Carre combined terse, but lyrical prose with the kind of complexity expected in literary fiction. His books grappled with betrayal, moral compromise and the psychological toll of a secret life. For him, the world of espionage was a “metaphor for the human condition”.
Born David John Moore Cornwell in Poole, southwest England on October 19, 1931, he joined the foreign service a year after university. Officially a diplomat, he was in fact a
“lowly” operative with the domestic intelligence service MI5 — he’d started as a student at Oxford — and then its overseas counterpart MI6, serving in Germany, then on the Cold War front line, under the cover of second secretary at the British embassy.
His first three novels were written while he was a spy, and his employers required him to publish under a pseudonym. He said he chose the name ‘le Carre, square in French, simply because he liked the mysterious, European sound of it.