John Le Carre Biography and List of Works

English writer known for realistic, suspenseful spy novels based on a wide knowledge of international espionage and human behaviour. Le Carré's best-known character is George Smiley, an aging, diffident, shadowlike member of the British Foreign Service. In his works the author has explored the moral problems of patriotism, espionage, and ends versus means. Le Care's style is precise and elegant, and his novels are noted for subtle characterization, authenticity, and skilful plotting. Le Carre's Familiarity with the intelligence services connects him to the long tradition of spy/writers, from Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and Daniel Defoe to modern day writers, such as Graham Greene, John Dickson Carr, Somerset Maugham, Alec Waugh, and Ted Allbeury.

"Beyond the trees, Smiley thought, cars are passing. Beyond the trees lies a whole world, but Lacon has this red castle and a sense of Christian ethic that promises him no reward except a knighthood, the respect of his peers, a fat pension, and a couple of charitable directorships in the City."
(from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 1974)

John Le Carré is the pen name of David Cornwall. He was born in Poole in Dorset. His father Ronnie Cornwell engaged in several million-pound swindles and was imprisoned for fraud. According to the author, this has been one of the factors for his fascination with secrets. It has also inspired his novel THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY (1977).

Dissatisfied with Sherbone School, le Carré persuaded his father to send him to school in Switzerland. He studied at Berne University (1948-49) and after the military service, which he did in Austria, le Carré returned in England. Le Carré studied modern languages at Lincoln College, Oxford, graduating in 1956. He spent two years as a tutor at Eton, teaching French and German, and then joined the Foreign Service.

In 1959 Le Carré became a member of the British Foreign Service in West Germany. Later he was a consul in Hamburg. Le Carré has denied that his work in Germany had an espionage character. His first novel, CALL FOR THE DEAD (1961), was a spy thriller and introduced George Smiley. It was followed by A MURDER OF QUALITY (1962), a detective novel set in a boys' school.

After the success of his third novel, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1963), le Carré began to devote himself to full-time writing. His aim was to portrait the intelligence world from a new view - "When I first began writing, Ian Fleming was riding high and the picture of the spy was that of a character who could have affairs with women, drive a fast car, who used gadgetry and gimmickry to escape." With his breakthrough novel le Carré established an alternative the James Bond cult and established a new type of hero. Graham Greene considered it the best spy story he has ever read and J.B. Priestley wrote that the book was 'superbly constructed with an atmosphere of chilly hell.' The novel won le Carré the Somerset Maugham Award.

'We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean... one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold... d'you see what I mean?'
(from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold)

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a story of a frustrated British agent, Leamas, whose life is far from the glamour of James Bond's world: he has a love affair with a lonely, unpaid librarian, not with a fashion model. After his sub-agents in East Germany have been killed, Leamas travels behind the Iron Curtain to destroy the head of the opposite spy organization, who has directed the killings. Soon he finds out that his own people had framed him in order to frame Fiedler, an East German. In the world of double-crossing, Leamas has no way out - he is used and destroyed by his superiors. The novel was filmed in 1966. The harshly photographed black and white film was directed by Martin Ritt, starring Richard Burton, Claire Bloom and Oskar Werner.

LOOKING CLASS WAR (1965) continued the exploration of the intrigues of Intelligence Service. It began with the death of a courier, who had been sent to Finland, one of the spy centres of Europe, to collect films taken by a commercial pilot, who had flown off course while over East Germany. Orders are given for planting an agent in this territory where, it is suspected, a new type of rocket site is being set up.

A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY (1968) was set in Bonn, the same town where le Carré had worked. The story deals with topical issues, student riots and rising neo-Fascism, with an ambiguous message about what might happen in the near future in Federal Germany. In TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (1974) le Carré re-introduced George Smiley. In the story a Soviet double agent has revealed some of the best agents in the English spy network. The mole is one of them - but which one? It was followed by The Honourable Schoolboy and SMILEY'S PEOPLE (1979), sometimes known as the 'Search for Karla trilogy', because the central theme is the struggle between Smiley and the Soviet spymaster Karla. The first two were made into huge successful television dramatisations.

THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL (1983) was narrated in second person, and was about the cause of Palestinian liberation. The central character is an American actress in Britain, who is persuaded by Israeli agents to lose her Arab sympathies and spy for them. The book was made into a film in 1984, losing in the process le Carré's intricate plotting. Before the last or latest Smiley novel, THE SECRET PILGRIM (1991), le Carré published A PERFECT SPY (1986), drawing on his own relations with his domineering father, and THE RUSSIAN HOUSE (1989), a response to the end of Cold War, where a British publisher becomes involved in espionage by a Soviet woman, who acts as emissary for a volatile friend. The novel was adapted for the screen, starring Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer.

"This gun is not a gun. This apple is not an apple. Winser was recalling the wise words of his law tutor of forty years ago as the great man spirited a green apple from the depths of his frayed sports coat and brandished it aloft for the inspection of his mostly female audience: 'It may look like an apple, ladies, it may smell like an apple, feel like an apple' - innuendo - 'but does it rattle like an apple? - Shakes it - 'cut like an apple?' - hauls an antique bread knife from a drawer of his desk, strikes. Apple translates into a shower of plaster."
(from Single&Single, 1999)

Le Care married in 1954.During the 1960s he lived on various Greek islands, before returning to England. He divorced and re married in 1972. He has four children, three from his first marriage. The fall of the Soviet Union and reunion of German left spy fiction adrift and le Carre turned his attention to the new role of the spy: THE NIGHT MANAGER (1993), and OUR GAME (1995) both reflect the new situation and the end of the Cold War. THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (1996) has as its background the future of the Panama Canal. SINGLE&SINGLE (1999) was a father-and-son story, which also dealt with a Russian mafia family.

Note: George Smiley's character is based on two persons: Lord Clanmorris, who wrote novels under the name John Bingham and who worked for MI5, and Vivian Green, who was Le Carre's teacher at Oxford. - For further reading: Wilderness of Mirrors by Peter Bennett (1998); Understanding John le Carré by John L. Cobbs (1998); John le Carré by LynnDiane Beene (1992); Spying on Le Carré by Ulrike Holtman (1991); Taking Sides: The Fiction of John Le Carré by Tony Barley (1986); John Le Carré by Peter Lewis (1985)

CALL FOR DEAD, (1961)