Obituary: John
le Carré
PublishedBBC -14 december 2020
10 hours ago
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John le
Carré was the pseudonym of the author David Cornwell, judged by many to be the
master of the spy novel.
Meticulously researched, and elegantly
written, many of his books reached a wider audience through TV and film
adaptations.
Le Carré stripped away the glamour and
romance that were a feature of the James Bond novels and instead examined the
real dark and seedy life of the professional spy.
In the twilight world of le Carré's
characters the distinction between good and bad, right and wrong was never that
clear cut.
David John Moore Cornwell was born on 19
Oct 1931 in Poole, Dorset.
His father, known as Ronnie, was a
fraudster, described by one biographer as "an epic con man of little
education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values".
Those exploits gave the young Cornwell
an early introduction to the arts of deception and double-dealing which would
form the core of his writing.
His mother walked out when he was five
and the young David invented the fiction that his father was in the secret
service to explain his many absences from home.
IMAGE
COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGES
image captionHe published his first
novel while still working for British Intelligence
After attending Sherborne School he went
on to the University of Berne to study foreign languages.
He did his military service in the Army
Intelligence Corps, running low grade agents into the eastern bloc before going
to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he gained a BA.
After teaching at Eton for two years he
joined the Foreign Office, initially as Second Secretary at the British Embassy
in Bonn.
During his time there he worked in the
intelligence records department and began scribbling down ideas for spy stories
on his trips between work and home.
'Excellence in his
profession'
His first novel, Call For The Dead,
appeared in 1961 while he was working for the intelligence service.
He adopted the pen name, John le Carré,
to get around a ban on Foreign Office employees publishing books under their
own name.
The story introduced characters who
would reappear in subsequent novels including his most famous creation, George
Smiley.
IMAGE
COPYRIGHTRONALD GRANT
image captionRichard Burton starred
in the film version of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold
"The moment I had Smiley as a
figure, with that past, that memory, that uncomfortable private life and that
excellence in his profession, I knew I had something I could live with and work
with."
Le Carré's career as a spy ended when he
became one of many British agents whose names were given to the Russians by the
traitor Kim Philby.
Philby, who defected to Moscow, later
became the inspiration for the mole "Gerald" in Tinker Tailor,
Soldier, Spy.
It was his third novel, The Spy Who Came
In From The Cold, which cemented his reputation and allowed him to take up
writing full time.
Fallible human beings
Published at the height of the Cold War
it challenged the perception held by many of his readers, that western spies
were above the dirty tricks practiced by their counterparts in the east.
The novel won the Golden Dagger award
for crime fiction and was turned into a memorable film with Richard Burton in
the role of the disillusioned spy, Alec Leamas.
In direct contrast to Ian Fleming's
romantic James Bond fantasies, le Carré portrayed his spies as fallible human
beings, fully aware of their own shortcomings and those of the systems they
served.
image captionLe Carré's spies
lacked the glamour of a James Bond
Le Carré believed that The Looking Glass
War, published in 1965, was his most realistic description of the intelligence
world in which he had worked, and cited that as the main reason for its lack of
success.
The follow up, A Small Town in Germany,
was set in Bonn, where le Carré had worked, and warned of the dangers posed by
a revival of the far right in German politics.
In 1971 he published an autobiographical
novel The Naïve And Sentimental Lover, based on the break up of his first
marriage to Alison Sharp.
His character, George Smiley, re-emerged
in his trilogy, Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and
Smiley's People.
Well-hidden expertise
The books took his readers deep into
"the circus" with jargon such as "honey trap",
"mole" and "lamplighter" becoming common parlance.
They also raised serious questions about
the lengths to which even democracies would go to preserve their own secrets,
something that exercised le Carré greatly.
He argued that in a world where official
secrecy is all-pervasive, the spy novel performed a necessary democratic
function. To hold up a mirror, however distorted, to the secret world and
demonstrate the monster it could become.
image captionAlec Guinness
portrayed George Smiley, Le Carré's most famous creation
Ironically, he delighted in maintaining
secrecy in his own personal life, refusing for many years to even acknowledge
that he had been a spy himself.
He jealously guarded his privacy,
travelling alone and incognito when he set off to research his novels.
For years he refused invitations to do
any interviews, maintaining that what he wrote was "the stuff of dreams,
not reality" and he was not, as the press seemed to imply, an expert on
espionage.
As the Soviet bloc began to implode le
Carré switched his attention to the conflict in Palestine with his 1983 novel
The Little Drummer Girl.
Political engagement
Three years later he finally managed to
exorcise the memory of his father with the publication of A Perfect Spy, which
many critics consider his most accomplished work.
The life of the spy, Magnus Pym, is
dominated by memories of his father Rick, a rogue and con-man whose character
is firmly based on Ronnie Cornwell.
In 1987, after years of being ostracised
by the Soviet authorities, le Carré was given permission to spend two weeks in
Russia, as a guest of the Soviet Writers' Union.
It was rumoured that the wife of the
Russian leader, Raisa Gorbachev, was a fan of le Carré's books and that she had
a hand in gaining the necessary Kremlin approval for the trip.
image captionTailor of Panama owed
a debt to Graham Greene
His output continued to be prolific with
a 1989 novel, The Russia House, marking the end of the Cold War, and the
reappearance of George Smiley in The Secret Pilgrim in 1991.
The 1996 novel, Tailor of Panama was
inspired by the Graham Greene story, Our Man in Havana, while The Constant
Gardener, published in 2000, saw him switch his attention to corruption in
Africa.
In 2003 he joined a number of writers
attacking the US led invasion of Iraq in an essay entitled, The United States
of America Has Gone Mad.
"How Bush and his junta succeeded
in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the
great public relations conjuring tricks of history", he wrote.
His remarks probably contributed to
accusations of anti-American bias in his 2004 book Absolute Friends, an
examination of the lives of two radicals from 1960s America, coming to terms
with advancing age.
In 2006 his 20th novel, Mission Song,
detailed the sometimes complex relationships between business and politics in
the Congo.
Notably self-disparaging about his own
achievements he consistently refused honours, insisting that there would never
be a Sir David Cornwell.
"A good writer is an expert on
nothing except himself", he once said. "And on that subject, if he is
wise, he holds his tongue".
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