John le Carré

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John le Carré
John le Carré in Hamburg (10 November 2008)
John le Carré in Hamburg, 2008
Born David John Moore Cornwell
(1931-10-19) 19 October 1931 (age 85)
Poole, Dorset, England
Occupation Novelist
former intelligence officer
Language English
Nationality British
Education Sherborne School
Alma mater Lincoln College, Oxford
Genre Spy fiction
Notable works The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Honourable Schoolboy
Smiley's People
The Night Manager
The Constant Gardener
Spouse Alison Sharp (m. 1954–71)
Valerie Eustace (m. 1972–present)
Children 4 sons
Website
johnlecarre.com

David John Moore Cornwell, alias John le Carré /lə ˈkɑːrˌeɪ/, (born 19 October 1931) is a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, and began writing novels under his pen name. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works. Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author.

In 2008, The Times ranked him 22nd on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2011, he was awarded the Goethe Medal.

Early life[edit]

Cornwell was born on 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England. His father was Ronald Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906–75), and his mother is Olive (Glassy) Cornwell. He has an older brother, Tony, two years his elder, now a retired advertising executive. His younger half-sister is the actress Charlotte Cornwell. His younger half-brother, Rupert Cornwell, is a former Washington bureau chief for the newspaper The Independent.[1][2] Cornwell said he did not know his mother, who abandoned him when he was five years old, until their re-acquaintance when he was 21 years old.[3] His relationship with his father was difficult given that he had been jailed for insurance fraud; was an associate of the Kray twins; and was continually in debt.[3] A biographer reports, "His father, Ronnie, made and lost his fortune a number of times due to elaborate confidence tricks and schemes which landed him in prison on at least one occasion. This was one of the factors that led to le Carré's fascination with secrets."[4]

The scheming con-man character, Rick Pym, Magnus Pym's father in A Perfect Spy, was based on Ronnie. When his father died in 1975, Cornwell paid for a memorial funeral service but did not attend it.[3]

Cornwell's schooling began at St Andrew's Preparatory School, near Pangbourne, Berkshire, and continued at Sherborne School. He proved to be unhappy with the typically harsh English public school régime of the time and disliked his disciplinarian housemaster, Thomas, and so withdrew.[5]

From 1948 to 1949, he studied foreign languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland. In 1950 he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West. In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying on far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents.[5]

When his father declared bankruptcy in 1954, Cornwell quit Oxford to teach at Millfield Preparatory School[6]; however, a year later he returned to Oxford, and graduated in 1956 with a (First Class Honours) Bachelor of Arts degree. He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, becoming an MI5 officer in 1958. He ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines and effected break-ins.[7] Encouraged by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels as "John Bingham"), and whilst being an active MI5 officer, Cornwell began writing his first novel, Call for the Dead (1961). Cornwell has identified Lord Clanmorris as one of two models for George Smiley, the spymaster of the Circus, the other being Vivian H. H. Green.[8] As a schoolboy, Cornwell had first met Green when he was the Chaplain and Assistant Master at Sherborne School (1942–51). The friendship continued after Green's move to Lincoln College, where he tutored Cornwell.[9]

In 1960, Cornwell transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, and worked under the cover of Second Secretary at the British Embassy at Bonn; he later was transferred to Hamburg as a political consul. There, he wrote the detective story A Murder of Quality (1962) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), as "John le Carré" (le Carré is French for "the square"[7]) – a pseudonym required because Foreign Office officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.

In 1964 Cornwell left the service to work full-time as a novelist, his intelligence-officer career at an end as the result of the betrayal of British agents' covers to the KGB by Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent (one of the Cambridge Five).[5][10] Cornwell depicts and analyses Philby as the upper-class traitor, code-named "Gerald" by the KGB, the mole George Smiley hunts in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974).[11][12]

Personal life[edit]

In 1954, Cornwell married Alison Ann Veronica Sharp; they had three sons—Simon, Stephen and Timothy—and divorced in 1971.[13] In 1972, Cornwell married Valérie Jane Eustace, a book editor with Hodder & Stoughton;[14] they have one son, Nicholas, who writes as Nick Harkaway.[15]

He has lived in St Buryan, Cornwall, for more than 40 years, where he owns a mile of cliff close to Land's End.[16]

Awards[edit]

In 1998, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Bath.[17] In 2012, he was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Oxford University.[18]

In 1964, Cornwell won the Somerset Maugham Award (established to enable British writers younger than 35 to enrich their writing by spending time abroad).

In 2008, The Times ranked him 22nd on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[19]

In 2011, he won the Goethe Medal, a yearly prize given by the Goethe Institute.

Writing[edit]

Both of Cornwell's first two novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962), are mystery fiction, in which George Smiley of the SIS (the Circus) resolves the riddles of the deaths investigated. In these novels, his motives are rather more personal than political.[20]

Most of Cornwell's novels are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945–91) and feature Circus agents as unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged in psychological more than physical drama.[21] Cornwell's books emphasise the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of East-West moral equivalence.[21] Moreover, they experience little of the violence typically encountered in action thrillers and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much of the conflict is internal, rather than external and visible.[21]

A departure from the use of the East-West conflict as a backdrop in this era is the spy novel The Little Drummer Girl (1983), which is set against the Israel-Palestine conflict.

A Perfect Spy (1986), which chronicles the boyhood moral education of Magnus Pym and how it leads to his becoming a spy, is the author's most autobiographical espionage novel, reflecting the boy's very close relationship with his con-man father. Biographer Lynndianne Beene describes the novelist's own father, Richard Cornwell, as "an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values". Cornwell reflected that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised". Cornwell's only non-genre novel, The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971), is the story of a man's postmarital existential crisis.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Cornwell's writing shifted to portrayal of the new multilateral world. His first completely post-Cold War novel, The Night Manager (1993), deals with drug and arms smuggling in the murky world of Latin America drug lords, shady Caribbean banking entities, and western officials who look the other way.

As a journalist, Cornwell wrote The Unbearable Peace (1991), a nonfiction account of Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (1911–92), the Swiss Army officer who spied for the Soviet Union from 1962 until 1975.[22]

In 2009, he donated the short story "The King Who Never Spoke" to the Oxfam "Ox-Tales" project, which included it in the project's Fire volume.[23]

In a TV interview with Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, Cornwell remarked on his own writing style that, since the facts that inform his work were widely known, he felt it was his job to put them into a context that made them believable to the reader.[24][when?]

Credited by his pen name, Cornwell appeared as an extra in the 2011 film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, among the guests at the Christmas party in several flashback scenes.

Politics[edit]

Cornwell feuded with Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses stating, "nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity".[25]

In January 2003, The Times published Cornwell's essay "The United States Has Gone Mad".[26] Le Carré contributed it to a volume of political essays titled Not One More Death (2006). Other contributors include Richard Dawkins, Brian Eno, Michel Faber, Harold Pinter, and Haifa Zangana.[27]

Cornwell wrote a testimonial in The Future of the NHS.[28]

Interviews[edit]

In February 1999, Cornwell was the guest in an episode of BBC Radio 4's Book Club broadcast with presenter James Naughtie and an audience in Penzance.[29]

In October 2008 an interview on BBC Four was broadcast, in which Mark Lawson asked him to name a Best of le Carré list of books; the novelist answered: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener.[citation needed][30]

In September 2010, Cornwell was interviewed at his house in Cornwall by the journalist Jon Snow for Channel 4 News. The conversation involved several topics: his writing career generally and processes adopted for writing (specifically about his latest book, Our Kind of Traitor, involving Russia and its current global influences, financial and political); his SIS career, discussing why – both personally and more generally – one did such a job then, as compared to now; and how the earlier fight against communism had now moved to the hugely negative effects of certain aspects of excessive capitalism. During the interview he said that it would be his last UK television interview. While reticent about his exact reasons, those he was willing to cite were that of slight self-loathing (which he considered most people feel), a distaste for showing off (he felt that writing necessarily involved a lot of this anyway) and an unwillingness to breach what he felt was the necessarily solitary nature of the writer's work. He was also wary of wasting writing time and dissipating his talent in social success, having seen this happen to many talented writers, to what he felt was the detriment of their later work.[31]

A week after this appearance, Cornwell was interviewed for the TV show Democracy Now! in the United States. He told the interviewer, Amy Goodman, "This is the last book about which I intend to give interviews. That isn't because I'm in any sense retiring. I've found that, actually, I've said everything I really want to say, outside my books. I would just like—I'm in wonderful shape. I'm entering my eightieth year. I just want to devote myself entirely to writing and not to this particular art form of conversation."[32][33]

The December 2010 Channel 4 broadcast John Le Carre: A Life Unmasked was described as his "most candid" television interview.[34]

In the February 2011 edition of Sunday Morning, Cornwell was interviewed on the CBC's Writers and Company, saying to Eleanor Watchtel that this would be his last interview.[35]

Cornwell was interviewed at the Hay on Wye festival on 26 May 2013. The video of the event is offered for sale by Cornwell to raise money to keep Hay Library open.[36]

Bibliography[edit]

Novels[edit]

Nonfiction[edit]

  • The Good Soldier (1991), collected in Granta 35: The Unbearable Peace
  • The United States Has Gone Mad (2003), collected in Not One More Death (2006), ISBN 1-844-67116-X
  • Afterword (2014), an essay on Kim Philby, published in A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre[38]
  • The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (2016)[39]

Short stories[edit]

  • "Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn?" (1967) published in the Saturday Evening Post 28 January 1967.
  • "What Ritual is Being Observed Tonight?" (1968) published in the Saturday Evening Post 2 November 1968.
  • "The Writer and The Horse" (1968) published in The Savile Club Centenary Magazine and later The Argosy (& The Saturday Review under the title A Writer and A Gentleman.)
  • "The King Who Never Spoke" (2009) published in Ox-Tales: Fire 2 July 2009.

Omnibus[edit]

  • The Incongruous Spy (1964), containing Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality
  • The Quest for Karla (1982), containing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People (republished in 1995 as Smiley Versus Karla in the UK; and John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels in the U.S.), ISBN 0-394-52848-4

Screenplays[edit]

Executive producer[edit]

Actor[edit]

Adaptations[edit]

Film[edit]

Radio[edit]

  • The Russia House (1994), BBC Radio 4, featuring Tom Baker as Barley Blair
  • The Complete Smiley (2009–2010) BBC Radio 4, an eight-part radio-play series, based on the novels featuring George Smiley, commencing with Call for the Dead, broadcast on 23 May 2009, with Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley, and concluding with The Secret Pilgrim in June 2010[40]
  • A Delicate Truth (May 2013), BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, recorded by Damian Lewis[41]
  • Abridged excerpts from The Pigeon Tunnel, broadcast as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, commencing on 12 September 2016[42]

Television[edit]

Archive[edit]

In 2010, Cornwell donated his literary archive to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The initial 85 boxes of material deposited included handwritten drafts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Constant Gardener. The library hosted a public display of these and other items to mark World Book Day in March 2011.[43][44]

Awards and honours[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Rupert Cornwell". The Independent. Retrieved 4 March 2010. 
  2. ^ "Espionage: The Perfect Spy Story". Time. 25 September 1989. Retrieved 4 March 2010. 
  3. ^ a b c Brennan, Zoe (2 April 2011). "What Does le Carré Have to Hide?". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 5 April 2011. 
  4. ^ "John Le Carre Biography, Plus Links to Book Reviews and Excerpts". BookBrowse. Retrieved 4 March 2010. 
  5. ^ a b c Anthony, Andrew (1 November 2009). "Observer Profile: John le Carré: A Man of Great Intelligence". The Observer. Retrieved 4 March 2010. 
  6. ^ [https://www.theguardian.com/books/1993/jul/17/crimebooks
  7. ^ a b Garton Ash, Timothy. "The Real le Carre". The New Yorker. 15 March 1999.
  8. ^ "The Reverend Vivian Green". The Daily Telegraph. 26 January 2005. ISSN 0307-1235. OCLC 49632006. Retrieved 4 August 2011. 
  9. ^ Singh, Anita (24 February 2011). "John le Carré: The Real George Smiley Revealed". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 3 September 2016. 
  10. ^ Plimpton, George (Summer 1997). "John le Carré, The Art of Fiction No. 149". Paris Review. 
  11. ^ Morrison, Blake (11 April 1986). "Then and Now: John le Carre". Times Literary Supplement. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 4 August 2011. 
  12. ^ Brennan, Zoe (2 April 2011). "What Does John Le Carre Have to Hide?". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. OCLC 49632006. Retrieved 4 August 2011. 
  13. ^ Debrett's People of Today, "Le Carre – John (pen name of David John Moore Cornwell)," 1 November 2000
  14. ^ Walker, Tim (5 June 2009). Eden, Richard, ed. "Le Carré pays tribute to his first love". The Daily Telegraph. 
  15. ^ Herbert, Ian (6 June 2007). "Written in his stars: son of Le Carré gets £300,000 for first novel". The Independent. 
  16. ^ Gibbs, Geoffrey (24 July 1999). "Spy Writer Fights for Clifftop Paradise". The Guardian. 
  17. ^ a b "Honorary Graduates 1989 to Present". bath.ac.uk. University of Bath. Retrieved 18 February 2012. 
  18. ^ "Oxford announces honorary degrees for 2012". University of Oxford. 19 January 2012. Retrieved 2013-07-26. 
  19. ^ Staff writer (5 January 2008). "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Times. London: Times Newspapers. Retrieved 24 July 2015. 
  20. ^ Tayler, Christopher (25 January 2007). "Belgravia Cockney". London Review of Books. 29 (2): 13–14. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 4 March 2010. 
  21. ^ a b c Holcombe, Garan (2006). "Contemporary Writers". British Council. Retrieved 4 March 2010. 
  22. ^ Rausing, Sigrid. "The Unbearable Peace". Granta. Retrieved 4 March 2010. 
  23. ^ "Ox-Tales". Oxfam. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 4 March 2010. 
  24. ^ Snow, Jon. "TV Interview with le Carré". Channel 4 News. 
  25. ^ "The spy who came in from the cold". The Economist. 30 October 2015. Retrieved 30 October 2015. 
  26. ^ le Carré, John (15 January 2003). "Opinion: The United States of America has gone mad". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 4 December 2010. Retrieved 8 February 2011. 
  27. ^ Not One More Death. The Library of Congress. 2006. 
  28. ^ Tempest, Michelle (2006). The Future of the NHS. ISBN 1-85811-369-5. Retrieved 13 October 2015. 
  29. ^ [1], Book Club, Radio Four, February 1999.
  30. ^ "Mark Lawson Talks To ... John le Carre" (Adobe Flash). BBC Four. October 2008. (Subscription required (help)). [link expired]
  31. ^ Le Carré betrayed by 'bad lot' spy Kim Philby, Channel 4 News. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
  32. ^ Goodman, Amy (20 September 2010). "Legendary British Author John le Carré on Why He Won't Be Reading Tony Blair's Iraq War-Defending Memoir". Democracy Now!. Retrieved 20 September 2010. 
  33. ^ Goodman, Amy (11 October 2010). "Exclusive: British Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa and His New Novel, Our Kind of Traitor". Democracy Now!. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
  34. ^ December 2010, Channel 4, John Le Carre: A Life Unmasked
  35. ^ CBS Sunday Morning, 27 February 2011
  36. ^ Hay Festival Interview with le Carré and Philippe Sands (1 hr 40 mins), 31 May 2013.
  37. ^ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/07/george-smiley-to-return-new-john-le-carre-novel-a-legacy-of-spies
  38. ^ Robert McCrum (9 March 2014). "A Spy Among Friends Review: Kim Philby's Treacherous Friendship with Nicholas Elliot". The Observer. Retrieved 25 March 2014. 
  39. ^ Penguin Random House to Publish John le Carré’s Memoir in September 2016, Le Carré Productions, 9 October 2015, retrieved 21 February 2016 
  40. ^ "The Complete Smiley". BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 23 May 2009. 
  41. ^ "John le Carre: 'My Frustration with Britain'". BBC News. 13 May 2013. Retrieved 13 May 2013. 
  42. ^ "The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carre, Book of the Week". BBC Radio 4. 
  43. ^ Katherine Sellgren (24 February 2011). "John le Carre donates archive to Bodleian Library". BBC News. Retrieved 13 May 2013. 
  44. ^ Charlotte Higgins (23 February 2011). "John le Carre gives his literary archive to Oxford's Bodleian Library". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 May 2013. 
  45. ^ a b "The CWA Gold Dagger". Crime Writers Association. 5 July 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2013. 
  46. ^ "The Somerset Maugham Award – Past Winners". The Society of Authors. Retrieved 6 March 2013. 
  47. ^ a b "The Edgar Database". Mystery Writers of America. Retrieved 10 March 2013. 
  48. ^ a b c "John le Carre, Esq". Debretts. Retrieved 10 March 2013. 
  49. ^ "The Cartier Diamond Dagger". Crime Writers Association. 5 July 2012. Archived from the original on 3 December 2012. Retrieved 7 January 2013. 
  50. ^ "Previous honorary graduates". University of Exeter. Retrieved 6 March 2013. 
  51. ^ "Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award". Tulsa Library Trust. 1990. 
  52. ^ "Honorary Graduates". St Andrews University. Retrieved 6 March 2013. 
  53. ^ "Honorary Graduates of Earlier Years". University of Southampton. Retrieved 6 March 2013. 
  54. ^ "John le Carrie Wins the Dagger of Daggers". Crime Writers' Association. Retrieved 6 March 2013. 
  55. ^ "Bern University Honours John le Carre". Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. 6 December 2008. Retrieved 9 March 2013. 
  56. ^ "The Goethe Medal – Award Recipients 1955–2012". Goethe Institute. Retrieved 5 March 2013. 
  57. ^ "Oxford Announces Honorary Degrees for 2012". University of Oxford. 19 January 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2013. 

Further reading[edit]

  • Aronoff, Myron J. The Spy Novels of John le Carre: Balancing Ethics and Politics. Palgrave.  ISBN 0-312-21482-0 (HB), ISBN 0-312-23881-9 (PB).
  • Beene, LynnDianne (1992). John le Carré. New York: Twayne Publishers. 
  • "British Mystery and Thriller Writers Since 1940, First Series". Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale. 87. 1989. 
  • Bruccoli, Matthew J.; Baughman, Judith S., eds. (2004). Conversations with John le Carré. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-669-7. 
  • Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol. 33, pp. 94–99.
  • Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 3 (1975); Vol. 5 (1976); Vol. 9 (1978); Vol. 15 (1980); Vol. 28 (1984).
  • Hindersmann, Jost (2005). "The right side lost, but the wrong side won: John le Carré's Spy Novels before and after the End of the Cold War". Clues: A Journal of Detection. 23 (4): 25–37. ISSN 0742-4248. doi:10.3200/CLUS.23.4.25-37. 
  • le Carré, John (April 15, 2013). "The Spy Who Liked Me; on the set with Richard Burton and Martin Ritt". The New Yorker. pp. 28–32.  (contains a 1965 photograph of actor Richard Burton and author John le Carré sitting together on the movie set of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold")
  • Monaghan, David. Smiley's Circus: A guide to the Secret World of John le Carre. Orbis Book Publishing. ISBN 0-85613-916-5. 
  • Sisman, Adam (2015). John le Carré: The Biography (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781408827932. 
  • Snyder, Robert Lance. John le Carré's Post-Cold War Fiction. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2017.

External links[edit]

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